


Brown Sugar

by eldritcher



Series: Unvollendete [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adult Content, BDSM, Culture, Love, M/M, Philosophy, Prisoner of War, Psychology, Romance, Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-05-28 20:17:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 74,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15056966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: Prison sucks. Thankfully, there is much gay porn later.Voldemort falls in love, and ends up in trouble for it.





	1. Nebuchadnezzar

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for giving Sugar a try. This has a happy ending but the beginning is bumpy - please be careful for triggers around torture, sexual content, war imagery, mental health. If this is the first story by me you are trying out, please consider trying Connubium or one of the others first, for an introduction to my writing style. 
> 
> All that said, I am a very careful writer. So please rest assured that the ending will leave you in a warm and quiet place.

If anyone had asked me after my resurrection what I missed the most, it would be the unquestioning loyalty and love that I had once held from those who served me. They served me still, but only out of fear, only because they had nobody else to turn to. 

I admit that having Harry Potter escape the graveyard intact, after the farce of our duel, did little to impress them that my magic and mind were restored along with this body. 

There was no pride in their service as they cowered before me, afraid to even meet my gaze. They lied when they could, obfuscating replies with rambling misinformation. Perhaps they thought that I was too removed from humanity to comprehend their games, to see their hatred. I had lost everything, I had lost body and mind and magic, but I had my instincts still. And I had always known when someone lied to me. It was no magic; I had been born an empath and I had cultivated that over the years to tactical ends. 

And I saw only craven guilt and betrayal where once there had been adulation and adoration. I had considered my horcruxes safe in their keeping. No longer. I needed them retrieved. 

I had started with the locket in the cave. And I had found it gone, and Regulus's mocking note left there. I had rushed to my mother's shack, and thankfully found the ring still buried there. Dumbledore's magic was heavy in the air. He had been scouting the lay of the land. I hastened back to Malfoy Manor with the ring. 

The cup was safe enough for the moment. I needed to wait for Bella to be fetched from Azkaban before I could command her to bring it to me. The diadem I had no way of retrieving. 

The diary. 

I was reckless in sweeping through Lucius's memories. The sentimental idiot had buried his father with it.

"I told you to protect it with your life," I said in disbelief, staring at the sorry spectacle he made on his fine carpeted floor.

"I thought you had... gone, my lord," he croaked, daintily extricating a perfectly folded silk kerchief from the folds of his soiled robes and dabbing away at a spot of blood trickling down his chin. He glanced up at me nervously before looking away. Whatever he had looked for he had clearly not found, because I sensed his grief even when I could not comprehend it. I had been about to cast punishment for his foolishness, when his grief stayed my hand. Whatever had he to grieve for? He had stayed in this manor, cosy and safe, with his beautiful, perfect family, while I had wandered a spirit in foreign forests. 

"Just get out of my sight," I told him tiredly. 

The idiot had no sense of self-preservation, because while shuffling away, he still managed to glare at Nagini who had been lying coiled in repose before the fireplace. He did not hate snakes. What had he against Nagini? 

\-----

It was raining when I came to the grave. The white marble gleamed resplendent in the darkness of the night. I squinted at the epitaph, trying to keep the water out of my eyes. 

_"Who trusted God was love indeed,_  
And love, Creation's final law,  
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw,  
With ravine, shrieked against his creed."  


What fancifulness! I shook my head at the words. Abraxas had been the dependable sort, I recollected. Old age had given him silly notions, I supposed. 

I accomplished my task with little ado. The diary had been placed within the folds of Tennyson's In Memoriam, right between the pages that had lent themselves to his epitaph. I wondered why. I left the poetry book in the crossed hands of the skeleton. His was not the first grave I had robbed, but I felt uneasy. 

Then I returned to the manor, clutching my diary tight to my chest. When I entered the foyer, I cleaned it of the dust of his grave, and cast spells to dry it off. 

"My lord?"

It was Lucius again. Had he no sense of self-preservation? 

"I must tell you how my father died," he said quietly, looking more miserable than he had earlier when I had left him crumpled on the floor.

I raised my wand. I had had enough of his buffoonery for the day. 

"He was trying to bring you back," he said hastily, looking frightened and determined in equal measure. "He was writing into that diary everyday."

I clutched the book closer, the first inkling of foreboding rising through my blood at his grim words. 

"Lucius?"

"He put his magic into the book," Lucius whispered. "And then, after consulting with a plethora of wizards, from Egyptian sorcerers to Native American shamans, he locked himself in his rooms, had a house-elf cut his heart out and place it into the book. I had the doors forced open to find him dead, and a babe bawling in the lukewarm, coagulated puddle of his blood." 

The horcrux! I reached out blindly to the nearest pillar, feeling disorientated and overwhelmed by his tale. Dim memories woke along the outskirts of my mind, of a man who had loved me.

"I read Tennyson to him," I whispered. There was a lake at Hogwarts, and there had been two boys under the summer skies, one writing his Charms essay and the other reciting Tennyson in a soft, clear voice. 

"It was your copy," Lucius said, seeming uncomfortable, no doubt stretched unforgivably past the decorum he preferred to keep. 

I could not yet remember, though an odd feeling of warmth and comfort arose softly through the haze. I had lost my mind adrift as I had been from the corporeal and the magical, enmeshed in the flesh of lesser creatures that did not think or deliberate as humans did. And now Lucius, who had suspected it ever since the night in the graveyard, had confirmation of it. I struggled to keep myself grounded, to keep myself focused on what mattered the most. 

"The child," I whispered. 

"I raised him," he confessed. Then he swallowed convulsively and fell to his knees before me, clutching the folds of my robes in desperation. "You will not harm him, my lord. Please!"

 _Not Harry,_ the woman had screamed, before dying for the boy, and killing me too. Lucius had been a selfish man all his life. And yet he remained on his knees, hands clasped in pleading, as he begged for a life that was not even of his blood. Was it a horcrux still? Born of a living heart that had loved enough to commit to willing sacrifice. A flare of jealousy rose in me. I had been born of potion and betrayal, of hatred and madness (twice). I must focus. I had to focus.

"Take me to this _creation_ ," I spat.

"My lord-" he began again, frightened and determined.

"Don't carry on so. I want to see what your foolish father has wrought," I said, grabbing his wrists and pulling him up. 

_Cold_ , I said in Parseltongue, when a gust of wind blew through the open windows. 

Lucius's face morphed into a curious mixture of anger and loss, but he said nothing. I had been doing this thoughtlessly, I realized. I had lost my barriers when speaking, often blurting the first thought that came to me, and in the language of snakes. Wormtail knew enough of the language now to respond to my mutterings with warming spells or a hasty message to the kitchens to fetch me warm milk or biscuits. His coddling served to keep him in my good graces, but had led to a dependency that I needed to remove if I was to command once again. How could I lead a cause if I sounded as helpless and confused as a child? Little wonder that Lucius considered me dangerous, equipped with deadly magic and skill, and piss-poor judgement. 

"Lead the way," I said, striving to stay focused. 

He took me past the main wing where they entertained, past the wing they had established me in, past their family residence, past the servants' quarters, and then finally to a small set of rooms which were well-furnished and kept, where there was a boy in a solarium playing an English horn to Franck's allegretto in the Symphony in D minor. He stood there as haunting as the music he crafted out of woodwind and reed, and when he saw us enter his chamber, he leavened the melody to a near scherzo, teasing us into a game of chase where he sped ahead as his fingers danced wild in accompaniment, reminding me of Dvorak's ambitious Scherzo Capriccioso. 

"Hello," he said politely, lowering his instrument, holding my gaze as fearlessly as Harry Potter had in the graveyard. 

He was more than horcrux, I realized, as he waited patiently, giving no inkling of his true emotions. His Occlumency shields were diffuse misdirections drawing me in and leaving me floundering as a deer caught in peat bogs; they reminded me more of Albus Dumbledore's mind than my own. Before I had lost my mind in rats and snakes, my shields had been as tall slabs of granite, on which invaders smashed themselves into smithereens. Then, as I pushed further into the boy's mind, I hit ungiving opposition.

"I taught him," Lucius said warily, knowing me well enough to predict what I would attempt first. "He has a natural affinity towards the art, I find." 

"Who taught you?"

I knew already. Severus. Severus who had learned from both Dumbledore and I, who was a master in the mind arts with a peculiar blend of innate talent and well-honed skills.

"Severus," Lucius admitted. "Narcissa and I needed to learn fast. We carried too many secrets which would have imperiled everything. After the events of 1981, the Aurors interrogated me often. Moody and Dumbledore were both interested in what secrets I kept."

"Severus's allegiances lie elsewhere," I muttered, trying to remember why.

I knew. No, I had known. I did not know any longer. Harry Potter's mother had ended everything I had been. She had been scarcely more than a girl. Foolish woman and what a fool she had made of me! Control. Focus. I stared at the slip of a boy that stood before me with nary a speck of fear. There was only curiosity. 

He bore the face I had worn in my youth. The sharp edges of deprivation and malnutrition that had marked my visage were not to be found in his. I wondered if this was how my Muggle father had been in his youth. Little wonder the wretched woman had fallen so to claim him as her own. I had been a murderer at that age. This boy was innocent, still, as Abraxas's blood had wiped the horcrux's taint. It was soul-magic, beyond theory and reproducibility. 

And he was no horcrux. He stood there, with a soul that had known no sorrow. He had known neither war nor hunger, he had wanted for nothing in Lucius's care, and his mind was as pristine as nothing I had ever seen before. Even Harry Potter had more darkness in him than this boy wrought of Abraxas's love and my magic. 

"Leave us, Lucius," I said. I raised my wand in warning when he hesitated. He withdrew with one last affectionate glance at the boy. 

Could it be? Had it passed from father to son? I had to tolerate unwanted attentions from many when I had no power to my name. And this boy, even if he was as removed from me as life from death, was still mine.

"Has he touched you?" I asked.

"No, he said you would likely arrange a politically advantageous match when the time came," he replied, still watching me in fascination. I wondered what he thought of me. I wondered what he knew of me. 

I cast my eyes about. There were books on the end-tables and in tall stacks by the walls. There was a cloak strewn across his neatly made bed. 

There were a pair of Quidditch gloves and a top-of-the-line broomstick well-cared for, lying askew by the coat-stand. He had flown out earlier. I had never preferred broom-sticks for transportation, far less for leisure. 

His clothes were finely made even if simple compared to the ornery of Lucius's day-clothes. His hands bore no calluses and were soft still, unmarked by hardships. And his throat bore not the faint mark of a noose. They had often noosed me to the railings of the bed, and bound my hands and legs in the hospital where they bled me out to flush the madness out of my body. I wondered if that method might shake me back to sanity in this new body.

"Would you like me to call for tea?" He asked politely.

"I will test your skills and education tomorrow," I ordered.

What was his wand? Lucius must have obtained it through channels illegal, for neither Ollivander nor Dumbledore were easy to fool. 

Did the boy have my aptitude for wandless magic? What did Severus suspect? Lucius was no Machiavelli, despite his pretensions. Someone must be suspicious. 

\-----

In the night, the cold of Wiltshire was intolerable and my dreams were frightening. I was either a spirit roving in bleak forests, or I was Harry Potter crying for Cedric Diggory. 

And that night, I woke suffocating in my own sheets, terrified and disorientated, and Nagini's restless weight did not help any. I shoved her away madly with a burst of wandless magic and wondered where Wormtail was. He was usually reliable to wake me before I was caught in the throes of nightmares. Oh, I had sent him to spy in London, the fool that I was, resolved to make it by myself for a week, even if I had been missing meals and sleeping poorly without his interventions. Lucius loathed Wormtail just as I did, but his poorly hidden judgmental glares had been unkind to my overwrought nerves. I had wanted to prove myself capable of functioning without crutches. I was admittedly not faring well on that matter. 

There was knocking at my door. Oh, had I screamed so loudly that Lucius had sent a house-elf to enquire after my well-being? I grabbed the end of the bedsheet that covered me and mopped the sweat and tears off my face. Then I lit the farthest sconces, to provide just enough light to mark the shape of me. The sooner I convinced the elf of my well-being, the sooner I could return to my privacy. 

"Come in," I barked. Focus. Control. Perhaps I ought to look into meditation. 

The boy stepped in, ethereal in the dim yellow light cast by the single torch. The flickering shadows licked dark stripes along his fine features as he stepped in. 

"Are you all right?" He asked, and there was only curiosity in his gaze. 

His hair was rustled and in disarray. His fingers trembled and there was dew on his cloak. Oh, had he been outside? I smelled herbs on him. There was mud on his boots, and I thought of Lucius's dismay at the trails he left on the fine floors of this manor. Had he been collecting ingredients for potions? Who had taught him? Lucius had little patience for that art. It must have been Narcissa. 

I must have been shaken and removed from myself, because I caught myself saying, "Talk to me awhile."

I had often demanded that of Wormtail. His inane prattling annoyed me until my nightmares were flung away by how his stuttering voice grated on my nerves. At this point, I likely knew more of the Marauders' exploits than Harry Potter did. 

The boy hesitated at the threshold of the chamber before nodding briskly and venturing closer to my bed. Nagini hissed in disapproval. The boy looked frightened by the large mass of her, but he walked forwards nevertheless and gingerly sat at the foot of the bed, primly folding his hands on his lap. Did he speak Parseltongue, as Harry Potter did? 

He conjured a warm flask of light that wafted in the air above us, muted and soft and white, and I sighed at the loveliness of it. 

"My good blade carves the casques of men,  
My tough lance thrusteth sure,  
My strength is as the strength of ten,  
Because my heart is pure." 

Sir Galahad. I stared at the boy painted in the firelight, young and sure, and I nearly wept for all that he was that I would never know in my blood. 

And when I woke, it was nearly noon, and birds chirped outside, and I heard laughter from the gardens below. The warm light he had conjured lingered still above my bed, softer and gentler than firelight, and my bones for once did not ache from the cold. I walked to the windows and saw the boy playing croquet with Lucius's young son and Narcissa. 

I made for Lucius's study. It was empty. Dim memories aided me as I locked myself in and sought to find something specific in the chest of drawers by the mantel. There, there it was. Letters. Letters preserved carefully with spell and the toils of love. There lingered on them the scent of English violets coy.

I read through hastily, trying to sense truth from lies, trying to fill in the large holes where my mind and memories had been. And it was twilight outside when I finished, with a headache and a heart full of incomprehensible, incomplete grief. 

Nightfall found me in St. Paul's, and I walked hastily to the confessional, where an old priest held court. There was nobody else and I cast repulsion charms to keep it so. I knelt by the latticed window.

"What burdens you, my child?" He asked gently, no doubt tired given the hour. How many murderers had come to him over the course of his service to the church, I wondered? It mattered little. I had not come to confess my sins.

"I think I have lost my mind," I whispered quietly. 

Words held power, or so Dumbledore liked to preach. I had finally voiced my greatest fear, put words to the frightened stares of my followers, given power to Harry Potter's accusations about the state of my sanity.

"I offer your pain to our merciful Lord," he said, proforma.

"I think I shall never be sane again," I murmured, wanting to speak my fear, clasping at the lattice edges of the wooden curtain that separated us. 

_"My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."_. He sighed and parted the curtain to look upon me. I startled, reaching for my wand in alarm. He did not scream upon beholding my face. 

"Have you read the book of Daniel?" He asked me, no doubt keeping his voice gentle so as to soothe me. 

"Do you know the tale of Nebuchadnezzar?" He pressed on, reaching out to clasp my tense fingers. 

It was a tale of hubris. He had spoken of his might, of his fair city of Babylon. And God had taken offense. 

"Thy kingdom is departed from thee," the priest told me solemnly. "And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the fields; they shall make thee eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee."

I had been a spirit broken fleeing from snake to mice to snake, desperate and unable to sustain myself through magic or mind. I had been nothing, except endless anguish and madness and fear. 

"I know the tale of Nebuchadnezzar very well," I admitted quietly.

"And then you know that reason was returned to him, that his honor and brightness were returned to him, that his kingdom and crown were returned to him, that his subjects's loyalty and his wife's love were returned to him."

"I would be content with reason returned," I muttered, pushing myself up from my aching knees. 

"If you know the tale of the King, you know how he turned things about, don't you?" The priest asked, smiling at me as if I were one of those lost little lambs who could be saved with pats on the head and chocolate. 

"Come back," he said, heaving himself out of the confessional, reminding me of Slughorn very much. "This is an abode of God, and he shelters anyone that needs his grace." He peered at me. "Dress warmly for the weather, won't you? We do give out cloaks and scarves and boots for those who need them, though I suspect that it is not money that concerns you."

 

It was claptrap, no doubt, but at least I felt freer in that I had confessed my breaking to another soul. I thought of the silent condemnation I had been subjected to since my return, of the long years of toil it had taken me to return to a corporeal existence. I thought of the boy I had been, selling myself for power, ridding myself of weaknesses one by one, unloved and full of hate. 

The bells chimed in midnight. There were church bells in Albania, in the little villages, and I would try to count the tolling to ground myself on bitterly cold nights while I was desperately trying to liberate myself from a dying animal that had fallen to a predator or to the elements. Sometimes, I hallucinated they were the bells tolling in the chapel of Godric's Hollow. Sometimes, I hallucinated they were the bells in Southwark tolling endlessly during the war as the priests rushed from one funeral to another.

 

Lucius had raised my horcrux - no, the child was no horcrux for all that he bore my soul - Lucius had raised him with all that I had not known in my life, with love and care, gifting him a life of good-health and wealth. 

\------

There were alliances to be made. Narcissa thinned her lips when werewolves came to her dining chamber, but she kept her silence dutifully as she coordinated the work of house-elves changing the drapes to match the new carpets. I had been slowly drafting contracts and stipulations to our cooperation, with vociferous and useless participation from Fenrir Greyback, when I heard a shout from the gardens. Narcissa blanched and rushed outdoors with her wand aloft. Then we heard her scream.

"Aurors," Fenrir said, eyes wild in fear. "The Aurors are raiding."

"Stay put," I ordered. Lucius was out in London. There were no other wizards on the grounds that day. Fenrir's alliance was too valuable a secret to be discovered this early in the war. 

I hurried outside, and found Narcissa facing a barricade of Aurors, and behind her was the boy, a wand gripped tightly in his hands. Synchronized, the Aurors cast stunning spells, and seven of them hit her squarely in the chest and she fell with a thud at the boy's feet. They caught sight of me then. There was fear on their faces. Oh, at least they had not forgotten what I had been capable of at the crest of my powers! I would have liked to kill them, but it would risk discovery if none returned. 

"Obliviate," I cast with my wand of yew, and blissful blankness covered them.

Then it was time for the tricky part. I had to convince them that their raid had been conducted without fuss, that while they had discovered an illegal artefact or two, there was nothing to support Harry Potter's claims of a risen Dark Lord. The first time I had cast magic as delicately complex as this, it had been on my uncle, to cover up the murder of my father and grandparents. There were twelve Aurors and I needed their stories to line up. This was difficult magic. The boy came closer to me, bewitched, as he watched me weave false memories adroitly into their minds. Dumbledore would be able to break the falsity apart, but it would ruin their minds. And I doubted that the Ministry would give him the leeway. The Mind Arts were poorly understood and widely considered to be close enough to Dark Magic, and even the healers in St. Mungo's refrained from practicing them for benevolent purposes. Little wonder Severus had taken to them gleefully. He enjoyed the arcane and the misunderstood, whether it be the punk music movement in Southwark or the mind arts. 

There was only one Auror left to bewitch. I cast a sideways glance at the curious boy. 

I did not know what possessed me then, to ask him, "Would you like to try?"

"Yes, but I don't have the slightest clue as to how," he admitted. "I don't want to mess up."

Mess up? He had picked up the parlance of this generation, hadn't he? 

"Come here," I beckoned, suddenly inspired to show him. 

Why would I not? He would be an ideal student, I knew. Lucius might have raised him to usurp me, and if so, all the better that I learned his mind. There was little that brought another closer to you as performing complex magic alongside them. 

He came forward fearlessly, and there was little warp to his curiosity unlike what had motivated Barty or Bella or Severus to approach me for mentorship long ago. 

I stood behind him and took his wand hand in mine. He was left-handed, I noticed. The orphanage had beaten my tendency to favor my left hand out of me at a young age, calling it a curse of the devil. His wand was of elder, and I wondered what its core was. So I had been right. Lucius had obtained the wand from some illegal channel. Ollivander did not work with elder. 

"The mind is a many-layered instrument," I said quietly, tracing open the Auror's mind with his wand, my hand closed over his to show him the wand movement. "Behold, how each layer connects to the next, and the pathways of neurons carrying stimulus and response to each layer. The poor practitioner would burn the neurons, thus achieving the end goal, but leaving the mind broken and the damage would give his crime away to even the stupidest of wizards. However, I am about to teach you how to change the activation function that triggers the stimulus-response chain in this Auror's mind. It helps to have a focus point for your manipulation. A scent, a taste, a feeling - any trigger will do. It must associate itself with the raid he has been conducting. This is the stimulus. Now we craft the response. Watch how we gently overlay the original signal with another, diffusing it until one smoothly transitions into the other."

"As perfect-fifths stacked through a Pythagorean tuning," he murmured, enchanted at the magic we wrought. I could feel his magic, raw and young, pure and warm, uncontrolled, starkly different and yet compatible with my own, just as I could feel the tension in his wrist as he focused fiercely to make sure that he wrought the complex operation with precision, just as I could feel the painful brilliance of his soul enveloping mine without intent. 

"Let me teach you to gracefully close the stitches and withdraw from his mind," I offered. It was not necessary. I did not bother with grace. However, he hearkened to my words so, and his magic cloaked mine as the warm summer-skies cloaking Tenerife. There was no revulsion or condemnation in him, as he let me hold his wrist, as he let me teach him. 

When he had completed his task, he turned to face me, his face glistening with sweat and his eyes bright in success. 

"Well done," I offered, and my words were honest even if stilted. When had I last praised anyone? 

"Now teach me how to revive Narcissa!" He asked, smiling, trusting that I could.

Healing was traditionally beyond those who practiced Dark Magic. And yet, I had always been adept at it, perhaps due to the necessity from my younger years when I had been bullied and beaten often. As Wormtail's hand showed, I could on occasion manage to heal others, even if in unconventional ways. I supposed I made an excellent surgeon and a poor healer. 

We walked to where she lay among the summer flowers. 

"Kneel by her," I told him. "Touch helps channel healing magic," I explained as he looked up askance at me. 

He pressed his right palm over her forehead and looked solemn as he placed his wand to her chest. "Cast in a gradual incline," I asked. "At first, a gentle flow to repair the damage, and as she awakens, pour strength and revival into her." 

"Don't they usually give potions for that?"

"Potions are merely spells in a different medium," I told him. "A true wizard is an alchemist, and his magic is invariant to the medium through which he affects his desire upon the world."

He was staring at me with dawning respect. I basked in his admiration. Oh, even Severus had not understood the truth of magic. Perhaps this was why Dumbledore remained the only true challenge to my power. Dumbledore knew the truth of magic, and he wielded it accordingly. 

Narcissa woke with a gasp. 

"I was not gradual enough, was I?" He said ruefully, helping her sit up gently. 

"Consider it a function that has a smooth differential," I told him absently, casting a spell of diagnosis on her to see how he had done. He had done exceptionally well, for someone attempting this for the first time.

"There is mud on your robes, Tom!" She exclaimed crossly, reaching out to right his hair with her fingers. Then she looked at the state of herself and sighed. "Oh, we shall both need a bath before dinner, my darling."

So they had given him the same name. I did not know what to make of it. I half-expected to be flung back to the orphanage, where Mrs. Cole had called that name as a curse. Only, Narcissa's warm voice and the boy's happy grin gave no room for old hatred. _Darling_ she had absently called him. He was no freak under her roof. Melancholy and loss overcame me.

"Help me up," she demanded. 

He hastily complied. There was little stiltedness to his movements. While I did not remember details, I knew that faking courtesies such as this had not come easily to me. He moved naturally and there was no deceit to his act. He genuinely meant to help her and there was affection in his bearing and touch.

She gave me a perfectly executed curtsey. It had once confused me, I remembered vaguely, when the women had begun curtseying to the young Dark Lord. 

"My gratitude for protecting us, my lord," she said quietly. And she looked up to meet my gaze without fear and condemnation for the first time since my rebirth. I had saved her. I must still be in possession of some of my senses, she judged.

Perhaps I ought to save the rest of them from Aurors. I could trap a dozen Aurors under the Imperius and execute this scheme to win back their devotion. 

"Thank you," the boy said then, smiling at me as if I were not a travesty unnatural. 

"I can teach you," I offered abruptly. 

"My lord, he is only fourteen," Narcissa interceded hastily, clutching his arm in protectiveness, no doubt envisioning me teaching the boy to gut Muggles and cast the unforgivables.

I was of half a mind to curse her for her gall when the boy hastily stepped up and said, "I want him to teach me, Narcissa." 

She bit her lips in consternation, but said nothing more of it, choosing to leave with her head held high. What could she say? I was her lord still. I paid little attention to her retreat, as my mind was focused on the boy.

"What if I teach you to torture and kill for me?" I wondered. 

"I don't think you will," he said laughing, watching me with eyes full of wonder and trust. "I think you will teach me how to wield magic." 

There, stood in the bright summer, amidst rows of English violets in riotous bloom, he embodied the innocence I had never had in me. And I knew I would not have him kill. 

\----

I did not know how to speak to him. I did not know how to speak to anyone. My health was improving but my mind was in tatters. 

I could hardly focus on a single conversation for any length of time, my mind straying loose despite my will. I did my best, with potions to help me focus, as I carefully wrought alliances and repaired old allegiances. 

Anyone who interacted frequently with me, including my Inner Circle, knew the state of my mind. They labored alongside me in the delusion that all was well. Even Severus, always scathing and impatient, traitor still, managed to bite his tongue as he gently led me from my ramblings back to the true subject of discussion at meetings often. I wondered what he reported back to the Order. I could still sense the lies he wore adroitly, even if his Occlumency shields were perfect. Did he paint me a madman lost? Did he consider me ineffectual and a threat no more? I let Lucius lead the discussions frequently, if it required a larger audience than the select few who already knew of my state. Silence was easier than speech. I interjected when there were decisions to be made. 

"We must break out the rest of the Inner Circle from Azkaban," Lucius proposed one day in September. I had been digging my nails into my palm, striving to keep myself focused.

Azkaban. Prison. Dementors. _Cold_ , I latched onto my memories of the place. 

"Cold," I muttered, and when they looked up at me aghast, I realized I had spoken aloud, and in English. They overlooked politely my ramblings in Parseltongue. English, however, caused many a head to swivel in my direction uncomfortably. 

"Are you all right?" Fenrir asked bluntly, never having held a modicum of tact or self-preservation. And down the aisle, a vampire I had been carefully trying to woo to our side looked equally perturbed. 

Lucius glared at Fenrir. 

"We shall use the cold to our advantage!" Narcissa exclaimed then, cloaking her pity and obscuring it with devotion. "What a marvellous idea, my lord! In January, when the waters freeze, no boats can enter or leave the port. There are Anti-Apparation wards on the island, just as there are wards to prevent portkeys and floo-places, so there are no other means of entry or exit. The few Aurors there will be sitting ducks there, with none to hurry to aid them. Broomsticks!"

I stared at her, grateful despite myself at her intervention. 

"Yes, what an excellent idea!" Severus joined in then, his beady eyes on me. 

"We will freeze before we get there!" Fenrir protested.

"I will cast a raw field of potential energy. The broom-stick motion will transform it into kinetic energy and keep you warm," I told him, finally dragging my mind to the situation. 

Even Severus looked impressed. Most did not understand, but physics was beyond those educated in the magical world unless they took especial care to educate themselves in the natural sciences. However, I had been once renowned for my ability to intuitively manipulate energy to matter, and to place static fields that could be triggered by certain phenomena that caused ionic discharge. Casting a spell to cloak them in a potential field was not trivial, even if the concept was. Staring at their impressed faces, sensing that they were giving me the benefit of doubt, the day brightened. If I pulled this off, if the breakout from Azkaban was successful, I would at least convince a few of my restored abilities. 

"We should only target a few," Lucius said. "Let there be no doubt that the Dark Lord remembers those who were loyal."

"No, no, break open the prison," I told him. "Let the Ministry think the Dementors deserted the place. No need to throw away their helpful disbelief that I have returned." 

"What of the Dementors?" The vampire asked. I had to sound collected, as if I had thought of everything. I needed the allegiance of his coven. More importantly, I needed the loyalty restored amongst my Death Eaters. I dug my nails into my palm more fiercely, and felt clammy blood on my skin. 

"I will be with you," I said quietly. "I will subdue them." Lucius frowned, no doubt thinking that a disastrous idea. Many looked at me disbelievingly. I was in little state to hold a conversation, far less to lead a complex prison breakout. 

"My lord-" Lucius began.

"That will be all," I said hastily, drawing the meeting to a close. 

\----

I could not sleep that night, and lay in bed with restless thoughts. How could I steady my mind for the length of time required to effect the breakout? Would I be as nimble and adaptive as I once was? A schoolboy had outwitted me in the graveyard. Had that been only due to the fact that I was still reeling from my return to a corporeal form? Had I lost my ability to keep a calm head in crucial times? 

I hastily pushed the covers away. Sleep was a lost cause. Perhaps a walk outside would clear my head. It was the full moon night and I remembered there were a few werewolves that Lucius sheltered to cement the alliance with Fenrir, but they were the least of my concerns. 

I had just stepped outside when I saw the boy skirting the shadows of the manicured hedges, carrying his broomstick and gloves. He caught my gaze, a curious mixture of woebegone and ashamed.

"What are you doing outside at this hour?" I asked, drawing nearer him. "It is the full moon, you know. At least, have the sense to fly instead of walking about." 

"I cannot go outside in the daylight," he said, peeved. "I am to stay hidden."

I stilled. Of course, he was Lucius's dirty secret. 

"You have never left the grounds, have you?" 

He shook his head miserably. This was his prison. And since we entertained all sorts these days, he had to stay hidden in his rooms during the day. There was a cast of pallor to him that had not been there before. I had loathed the idea of being cooped up in the orphanage. I had also sought to escape any confinement, even one as pleasant as Hogwarts, seeking the forest and the grounds over the shelter of stones. And this boy had been a prisoner here all his life. Had he met anyone besides the family here? I remembered his bright curiosity and eagerness to assist when we had worked together to befuddle the Aurors. Little wonder he took to me so easily. Lucius had the power to keep him safe on these grounds, with blood wards, given that the boy was of Abraxas's bloodline. However, without political power, without allies, Lucius could not protect him anywhere else. There were too many who would have killed the boy upon sighting him. 

"I cannot have you leave the grounds yet," I told him quietly, and wondered why I handled him with what I began to see as tenderness. It was excusable. He held my soul. "However, I will have the Death Eaters and any visitor here that I trust to a degree swear an Unbreakable Vow to keep you safe, to never give away your existence to anyone else. There is little charm to be found in their company or conversation, but giving you the ability to interact with them on your own terms is in my power."

He stared at me, mouth open, eyes wide in amazement, before he broke into a half-sob and ran to me. I startled when he wound his arms about me in an embrace of earnest, spontaneous gratitude. I remembered dimly that the boy I had been had hungered for touch, even if I had shied away from it at every instance, paranoid and frightened, expecting blows, bruises and mockery instead of affection. This boy was free of such fears, and this boy was mine. Slowly, I brought my hands to his shoulders and squeezed to reciprocate his gesture of affection as best as I could. When he stood back, there were tears on his pale face. 

"Thank you," he said fervently. "I had never dared hope-"

"Ask me," I blurted out, hapless in my need to see his tears gone, keen in my resolve to have him joyful. "Ask me, and I will do what is in my power." He was crying again, and I sensed it was only relief and joy, and I found it easy to pull him into my arms, to card my fingers through his hair in a paltry gesture of comfort. 

Werewolves howled at the moon. The boy stiffened.

"Don't be afraid," I told the boy gently, compelled to set him at ease. 

"I am not," he shyly confessed, looking up at me with a sweet smile, relaxing into my hold once again boneless. "I am with you."

\----

Lucius was shocked at my suggestion.

"My lord! That is risky!" He exclaimed. I could sense what he had the good grace not to say. I was trying to undo his efforts over the years to protect the boy. 

"No," Narcissa cut in. She looked unhappy but determined. "I agree with him. Tom needs to meet other people, Lucius. We cannot keep him captive here for the rest of his life. There will be war. He must learn of the world outside if he is to survive. This is a first step towards that end."

"I cannot protect him-"

"No, but I can," I cut in. They stared at me. 

"My lord, you have greater concerns," Lucius reminded me. "The prophecy. Harry Potter."

There was distaste on his face despite his efforts to hide it. He had never had Narcissa's ability to dissimulate. I knew not many considered my focus on Harry Potter to be a marker of my sanity. I thought of that woman once again, screaming at me to spare her child. Focus. Control. I dug my nails into my skin to focus my mind.

"He is more important to me than Harry Potter," I said calmly. 

For the first time since my return, there was a sliver of approval on Lucius's face. 

It was going to be a hard road ahead, I thought dismally. I did need the breakout to fare well, to convince them all that I could still lead them to success. 

\----

I woke abruptly, from the throes of a lucid nightmare, hissing nonsense, believing myself still in the body of a possessed snake, when I heard faint refrains of an English horn. 

I thought of the warm ball of light he had conjured that night, when he had come to my door to awaken me from my nightmares. I wished he had come again to my door, even if I was glad that he had not heard my screams. His voice had calmed me. He had recited Sir Galahad, and I knew with surety that I was not in Albania abandoned and near death. I dug my nails into my wrist and forced myself to stay grounded.

\-----

I drank what must have been a vat of focusing potions, at inadvisable concentrations, and led them to Azkaban. The boy watched me cast the potential energy field, eyes full of awe, and I could not prevent acknowledging his brilliant smile with a nod. There was color to his cheeks and cheerfulness clung to him every hour of day and night, as he easily mingled with the many who came to the manor. He liked people. Why wouldn't he? He had been deprived of the world's cruelty and farce all his life, safe here in insulation. Little wonder he imagined everyone as Pandora's boxes full of curiosities for him to tease out. 

"Be safe," he said, standing beside Narcissa, his arm in hers, and I pretended that it was a wish only for me, even if he had been looking at Lucius as he spoke. 

I returned victorious. One or two had constantly kept an eye on me, I knew, but I had managed success. The plan, for once, had gone without fuss. Even Severus had refrained from betrayal. I wondered if Dumbledore had merely decided on inaction or if Severus truly had been held by the spells to hold inviolate trust that I had cast upon all of them. 

I separated myself from the cheering men and women returned, and from the profusely grateful prisoners whom we had liberated. I cast a glance at Lucius to ascertain he was in charge, before taking myself into the depths of the manor. The first flush of victory was fading, and withdrawal from the potions I had overdosed on was speedily catching up as adrenaline vanished from my bloodstream. I clutched the banisters for support and tried to remember the name of the house-elf that had often served me repasts in my chambers. The world spun about me, and I closed my eyes tight, heaving down bile. My fingers loosened their grip on the bannister, and darkness flashed dull across my mind, and I tried to stay conscious. I did not wish to be found comatose in a pool of my own vomit when the others entered the manor. 

"Here," a familiar voice whispered, and a reed thin arm came to wrap itself about my waist. "Lean on me," he said. "We are very close to my rooms." 

It was an indignity, but it was less so compared to being found insensate in the corridors. 

He was clumsy, no doubt unused to nursing anyone who had overdosed on potions. He was a quick thinker, nevertheless, taking care to cast spells to keep my trachea open as I threw up the remnants of the potion. He placed cold clothes on my forehead in a bid to soothe my fever, he stripped me of my sweat-sodden robes and placed me under his warm blankets, casting spells to cool whenever my temperature rose, casting that warm ball of light when my temperature fell sharply. When I finally lapsed into restless sleep, haunted by specters, he took my hand in his, and sang to me softly.

"O that 'twere possible  
After long grief and pain  
To find the arms of my true love  
Round me once again!  
When I was wont to meet her  
In the silent woody places  
By the home that gave me birth,  
We stood tranced in long embraces  
Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter  
Than any thing on earth."

I woke to find dawn sweeping into the room. He was slumped in his chair, my hand still in his clasp safe. There were dark circles around his eyes, speaking to his disturbed sleep. I was still feverish, but I found the dull ache slowly receding from my head. I tried to softly withdraw my hand, deciding to make an exit before he woke. Perhaps I ought to strip the bedding and move him to his bed. He might sleep more deeply then. 

"Are you awake?" He murmured, peeling open his tired eyes, clasping my hand tightly as I sought to tug it away. "How are you?"

I stared at him, reeling to find the correct response. Nobody had asked me that before, I was quite sure. 

"Oh, you should stop scratching your skin. Some of these are quite deep," he muttered, laying my hand open on his lap and inspecting the marks I had made over time digging my nails into the paper thin skin at my wrists. He ran a gentle finger over them absently, and I wrenched my hand away. 

"I didn't mean to offend you," he said, watching me cautiously.

I had not meant to frighten him. I did not want him to fear me. I preferred his open smiles and innocent admiration. 

I struggled to find words as I said, "I find that it helps me focus."

It was a shameful confession, but I preferred the warm concern he showed to the caution of before. 

"Oh, there must be other ways," he said quietly. He dropped the subject tactfully, instead pressing his palm over my forehead, as if to ascertain my temperature, and he ignored my flinch. 

"Your temperature has stabilized," he said in a voice that betrayed his relief. I basked in his worry. "I heard cheers and celebrations all night long," he continued. "You must have had a spectacular success." His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. "I hope it merited risking your health."

I had watched them all stand in awe, once more loyal and devoted, my prowess reaffirming their faith. Oh, it had been worth it.

"Thank you for ensuring that I did not keel over in the corridors," I told him stiltedly, unused to expressing true gratitude, and yet determined to try in an effort to bring forth his cheer instead of his disapproval.

"I am glad that you are well," he said frankly, dredging up a smile for me, though concern lingered in his eyes still.

\-----

 

Teaching him brought us closer. He was no threat to me. Lucius had raised him a normal boy, with little pretensions towards usurping anyone. He was fiercely independent and had strong opinions on most everything, but he was also eminently reasonable and logical, willing to change his views in the face of evidence to the contrary. He tolerated my flights of irrationality and ramblings with little ado, and I suspected that I was at my sanest in his company, grounded by his sweet smiles and his even voice.

The days passed us by, as he blossomed under my tutelage, and I was impressed even despite myself. He had an attention to detail that I had never had, crafting spells that were delicate and precise, often set to trigger on time as a stimulus. It was an unusual approach to spell-crafting, but he was an unusual blend of soul and heart. I had become slowly accustomed to praising him warmly, overcoming my hesitation in the beginning to speak the truth of how he impressed me. He responded so well to my praise, tasking himself to perform better each time, striving to bring me to praise his work again and again. 

I found it jarring to train soldiers for our war. They were grim and determined, frightened, fearful of life and death, and they did not look upon with me with his eagerness to learn, perfect, and improvise. 

After my meetings, after debriefs of various plots and schemes, I would return to his solarium, where he often played the English horn for me before he was called down to supper with his family. 

We had heard the prophecy. It bode ill, but there was little to be done while Albus Dumbledore breathed. He protected Harry Potter fiercely. And I knew I had to wait until the boy turned seventeen or older. I had restored trust among my followers, but it was a precarious faith, and it would not fare well if I attempted to kill the boy before he became a man. It would not do to kill the boy, only to find myself betrayed again. Marginalizing Albus Dumbledore politically, however, was an end they vociferously clamored for. 

Dumbledore was cautious too. So the days dragged on, as we positioned moles and key personnel to neutralize each other's influence, as we danced about the Ministry's deliberate policy of studied ignorance, as we covered up the occasional missing person as a drunken revelry gone wrong or an accident unavoidable. 

My mind was in disrepair but my nightmares were slowly subsiding. Restful sleep had helped soothe my mind, had helped me ground myself better. I made it through meetings without tearing open nail marks on my skin more often than not. 

And when I did claw myself bloody, the boy would soak them in Murtlap Essence afterwards, soothing the inflamed wounds. The first time he had done that, I had felt ashamed and angered. Then I noticed the sadness he wore.

"I am sorry," I blurted out, desperate to vanish away his sorrow. 

"Don't be sorry," he said, looking up at me. "You are not self-destructive, only attempting to ground yourself in the least intrusive ways you know."

I did not need his understanding or pity. I was inexplicably warmed nevertheless. 

Oh, I had been in his life scarce three years, and I had already shown him the dark underbelly of humankind. His life had been utopian until I set foot in it to teach him sorrow and fear, to teach him avarice and pain. Narcissa's wariness had given way to resignation. Lucius's fears about protecting the boy had turned to fatalism. With thin lips and a stern face, he would chivvy his son and the boy out to play Quidditch when we had our meetings, taking great care to separate them from the war brewing outside as much as he could, for as long as he could. His son had not returned to Hogwarts for the last year. Instead, the two boys had been tutored at home by Narcissa. I wondered if Tom would feel less compelled to seek my company, given that there was someone his own age in the manor. However, he continued seeking my tutelage and company as often as I permitted him to. 

 

I had taught him to cast spells intricate, to draw upon magic from air and water and earth, to interpret the whispers in the woods and the tides under an ebbing moon. I had taught him to defend, to duel, and to heal. I had never taught him to kill. I remembered the boy he had been, three years ago, sneaking out on a full moon night for a moment's freedom. He had not feared the wolves. _I am not afraid,_ he had said. _I am with you_ , he had said. At times, I fiercely wished that I had my memories if not my sanity, that I might remember the boys who had written letters to each other that still smelled of English violets. What love had it been, that one man tore his heart out to give birth to another? 

And one evening in the April of 1998, as he tended to my wrists with gentle care, I realized that my many weaknesses did not fade his admiration, and I was buoyed by that. 

He looked up at me again and surprise flitted across his features.

"You are smiling," he noted, putting the essence away. 

"I am with you," I said quietly. 

His smile was as brilliant as the rising sun over the North Pole, and he placed his hands boldly on my shoulders before leaning to press a dry kiss to my lips. I almost pushed him away in shock, before I summoned enough presence of mind to stay still so as not to frighten him. My heart hammered in my chest, confused and frightened. 

I remembered an old folly. I remembered Abraxas speaking to me of love, his expression drawn and forlorn as I rejected his truths and called him a buffoon. I remembered abandoning him for nearly a decade, and returning to him with my tail tucked between my legs, only to find him irrevocably claimed and married to a fine woman. I had left a book of _In Memoriam_ , as amends. I doubted still that I could have given him what he sought, even if we had exchanged letters that bore the scent of the violets in his gardens still. Nevertheless, I had wished that I had not called him a fool. 

"Tom-" I began clumsily, trying to articulate my concerns without turning him to worry.

How had I been at sixteen or seventeen? I did not remember myself particularly interested in sexual or romantic exploration. I hated touch by that age, I remembered. I had eased myself through masturbation, though I had found it a necessary inconvenience. 

Tom had had flings with two or three of my youngest Death Eaters, I knew. Lucius, mother-hen that he could be, had snipped each one in its bud, carrying on about venereal diseases in such graphic detail that even Narcissa had been surprised by his vehemence on the subject.

Perhaps this was not intended as romantic, I decided. That was the most likely explanation. While he had never looked upon me with revulsion, he had never beheld me with want. My soul in him must recognize what I was to him on some level, I suspected. 

He was watching me carefully, his face subdued and giving nothing away. 

"Don't," I told him abruptly, wounded by that. "Don't hide." I cast my thoughts back to that night once more. "Ask, and if it is within my power, you will have it."

"Lucius told me that I must get over my attraction to you," he said hesitantly. "Are we-" he cleared his throat. "Are we related?"

I sat back in my chair and beheld the man he was becoming. I tended to look for myself in him often, but each time I did so, I saw none of me and all of him. Harry Potter had more in common with me than this boy. And I was glad for that. There was little that had been pleasant in my past and I wished none of it on him.

He was cusped on manhood, and he was nothing at all like me thankfully. His shoulders were broader than mine had been, and he was whip-thin and his skin had a tinge of sun's bronze even in April, testifying to his active pursuits. He was a fine horseman and an excellent Quidditch player. He went fox-hunting with Lucius and played croquet with Narcissa. On a few occasions, I had seen him dance with Bella. She loved dancing ad she was fond of trying to cajole her nephew and Tom into dancing with her. His laughter, as they stumbled about to a wizarding remix of the Clash's White Riot, was free and genuine, and his magic was warm and home. 

He asked me if we were related. I had anticipated that one day I would have to explain. I had not dwelt on the matter, unpleasant as it was to contemplate when I had my happiness born of his company. He was waiting patiently for my reply, his eyes full of trust. It was his trust that undid me.

"What do you know about horcruxes?" 

His face darkened in worry. 

"That was why you did not die," he murmured, finally fitting the pieces together. A frown creased his brow as he wondered what bearing that had on his original question. 

"Cast Legilimency on me," I requested.

"I don't want to hurt you!" He exclaimed, fretful. 

"Sweet boy, of course you shan't," I remonstrated gently. "I trust you not to." 

He clenched his fists and nodded in determination. I realized that I trusted him so. Swallowing, I forced that epiphany away, laying open a select portion of my mind to him, dredging up the secret of him to the forefront. It was painless, even when he inhaled sharply upon seeing the truth. He withdrew carefully, taking utmost caution not to cause me pain. He was exceptionally good at it, reminding me of Dumbledore quite sharply. He was no Severus, with a touch tainted by bitterness. He was not me, cutting minds with scalpels and knives. Instead, as Dumbledore, he gently eased himself into the caves of my mind, as Daniel in that den of lions, and the waters parted for him. 

"Are you all right?" He asked me, once we were facing each other. He was clammy and his fingers were trembling, but he had still thought to enquire after my well-being first.

"I am yours, aren't I?" He asked in a whisper, cutting off his spell gently. "That is why you have taught me. That is why you trust me."

"No," I said firmly, before he could cast himself further into confusion and recriminations. He looked up at me, startled. "You bear my soul, but you are not mine. You have my magic and Abraxas's blood. You are nothing whatsoever like me and you are wholly your own man." I took a deep breath and said, "I taught you because you wished to learn. I trusted you despite myself."

"You were not appalled that I kissed you?" He whispered in a small voice, woebegone and remorseful, and when he dared meet my eyes there was soft longing in his gaze. 

There were no secrets left. 

"Ask, and if it is within my power, you shall have," I reiterated.

"It will not be because you loved Abraxas once? It will not be because I resemble you?" 

"If he were alive, I would thank him for you. And as for resemblance, I associated those features with my father and I wanted to be rid of them as soon as I could. It was only decades later, when I beheld you, that I saw beauty in those features for the first time." I dared place my hand on his trembling fingers. "Don't fret. There is nobody else that I have desired to please in such a visceral manner. If this is truly what you want, you shall have it of me."

"And what of you? Do you want this?" He asked, leaning forward again, and I watched in fascination at the tapestry of emotions that flitted across his features - concern, curiosity, desire, and affection. 

I had not wanted anyone before, for company or pleasure. I knew that I desired his company, that I desired to bring him joy. How curious, that he knew unadulterated happiness in my tutelage and attentions, in my conversation and in my trust. Nobody else had held such straightforward positive emotions towards anything I offered. I could only focus for protracted lengths of time on him, my roving mind, which was torn and insane, pled failure on every other matter. He was my quiet.

If anything, I hesitated for the first time in my life because I felt reluctant to tarnish that innocence of him which I so fiercely cherished, which I took comfort in even when I failed to understand. Dumbledore carried on so about love. I submitted that innocence was the most powerful magic. How could something so pure and sacred have come of my soul? 

"You remind me of Maud," I said foolishly. 

"Maud?" He asked, curious but not accusatory. Oh, how I basked in his unquestioning trust! I was sure that another might have railed at me immediately, demanding to know who Maud had been to me.

"Maud with her exquisite face.  
And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky,  
And feet like sunny gems on an English green,  
Maud in the light of her youth and her grace,  
Singing of Death, and of Honour that cannot die,  
Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean,  
And myself so languid and base."

His cheeks were rosy when I finished reciting, and his eyes sparkled in the firelight. I smiled crookedly. Charm was lost to this body of mine, and genuineness had never been my strength. He recited poetry imbuing it with life and color, and words danced right into my blood, into my heart, searing across the holocaust that was my mind. I paled abominably by comparison but his reaction was heartwarming. 

"You are not base," he chided me, cheeks still flushed with high emotion. "May I have a kiss, please?"

I adored his daring. Feeling contrary, I took his hands in mine and pressed my lips lightly to each of his perfect knuckles. He squirmed at the sensation and contrived to set loose a hand to cup my face. Tenderness. I wondered how a single touch could embody the absoluteness of his purity. 

"You have had your turn," he told me plainly, and pressed a kiss to my lips once again. 

It was raining outside. Dumbledore's plans were in motion. The diadem was lost to me. Harry Potter was becoming a true threat; growing skill complementing luck. My recruiting efforts were not successful, apart from the early alliances we had brokered with the werewolves. The Ministry was beginning to be convinced that I had truly returned. Funding for the war was in a precarious state. I did not have a wand to face Harry Potter. My soul was a mutilated monster, but for what was in this boy that held me. The past three years had helped me ground myself better, but my mind was irrevocably gone and most everyone knew the truth of it. There was pity even in Bella's gaze. Oh, how low had I fallen that a Black pitied me! Wasn't insanity their birthright? 

I knelt before the boy and placed my head on his lap, sighing when his fingers came to trace arcs over my shoulders and spine, tightly closing my eyes to shut out everything, grounding myself on the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

"Your mind-" he spoke softly, sorrowful and lost. "I cannot imagine that you endure what has been wrought on it every waking moment." 

I thought of the priest at St. Paul's. Nebuchadnezzar had his reason returned to him, the priest had reminded me. I thought of Wormtail waking me only a night ago, when I had screamed for my father and for Dumbledore, and he had rambled about a passage through Honeydukes until I fell asleep listening to his prattling. 

There was a sharp rap on the door then. Abashed and thrown out of the haze the boy had ensconced me in, I got to my feet. 

It was Narcissa. She cast us a curious look before saying solemnly, "Nagini was killed in our gardens, my lord. They...they caught her when she was digesting her prey and hacked her to pieces." 

I sat down heavily, trying to comprehend the loss that swept over me. I had been fond of the snake, but she had just been a snake. My soul...

"Perhaps you should come with me, Tom," Narcissa suggested warily, spurred by her concern for the boy. 

Yes, I wanted him to leave. My breathing hitched as my mind tore itself apart, seeking answers, seeking understanding. I wanted to be alone. And he needed to be safe. They had killed her on these grounds, while I was in the house. What would they do to him, if they got their hands on him? 

"Take the boy and flee to Peru! He must be safe," I ordered her, trying and failing to sound composed. 

"He is the safest here," she said quietly, sadly, and there was understanding in her gaze as she looked at me as if she had not seen me before. "You must win your war if he is to be truly safe."

Hacked to pieces. What would they do to him? I couldn't, I couldn't -- 

When I resurfaced again, he was seated on the arm of my chair, and I was clutching his shoulder in desperation. Mercifully, Narcissa was no longer in the room. He was crying silently and I loathed myself for having caused him to.

"Please don't, please don't-" I violently rubbed his cheeks until tears no longer glistened on his skin. My nails left scratch marks and I hated myself all the more. "It is not worth your tears. I am a madman. Everyone knows," I confessed. "I cannot keep you safe."

He threw himself on me, and I caught him startled, not knowing what to do next. Hacked to pieces. Oh this boy, what would they do to him? They would not wait to see what he was, to see that he was merely unfortunate to have a shell that had once been mine, to see he was more than the soul that had been used to craft him.

"Sleep with me tonight," he said in a subdued voice. I did not dissuade him when he tugged me towards his cleanly made bed. I did not dissuade him when he stripped me to my underclothes with brisk, efficient movements. 

"Get under the covers," he asked, going about the room snuffing candles out.

When he slipped in beside me, he was warm and smelled of a man's musk and faint traces of Narcissa's talcum. 

\-----


	2. Guantánamo

Warnings: Torture, Murder, Adult Content, War. Please watch your step.

 

\-----

I awoke at dawn, and watched the boy sleep. His long and slender body reminded me of the statues excavated from Pompeii. The rising dawn hued a touch of red to his spread fingers that lay possessively over my breast. I lifted his hand to my mouth and pressed a kiss, before placing it carefully on the bedcovers. My mind, restless and broken, was eased into quiet. Would a measure of sanity be restored if I were to share his bed regularly? Would he want me again? We had not shared our bodies. Perhaps he was not erotically attracted. I remembered how he had clung to me under the cloak of moonlight. I could not remember if I had slept with someone before. It mattered not; this felt new and this felt right. I dressed slowly and left, locking the room behind me, wondering if this was balm in Gilead.

I had scarce taken a step forward when I saw that Severus awaited me, grim of face, ready to die. There was no facade remaining, only hatred.

What had I done to him to merit this hate that had spurred him through the years to betray me many times over? Why had I not killed him, made an example out of him?

"Give my best wishes to Tom," he requested.

"They will have him killed and you have given them the tools to," I said bitterly. Severus was fond of the boy, in so far as Severus was fond of anyone.

"Nobody knows about him," Severus said, beady eyes fixed on my wand. "I have vowed an Unbreakable Vow to keep his secrets, haven't I?"

I would have killed him immediately, tired as I was of his treachery. This day had been a long time in the making.

I remembered the boy in the morning light, breathing slowly, smiling in his sleep. I had seen his body, unscarred and perfect, supple and young.

Hacked to pieces.

"Legilimens!" I shouted, for once my mind focused with extraordinary precision, surmounting madness in my desperate need to protect, and I could not protect unless I knew what had been betrayed, and I did not falter even when immense walls of granite rose to protect Severus's mind. I was not fooled when he attempted many misleading tactics to tug me away from the kernels of truth that he clung tightly to, and once I had settled deep in his mind, as a spider within a web, I reached out and unfurled my mind over his, and it was a sharp contrast of broken disarray spread uneven over his perfectly organized layers of thought and memories. Then he screamed and brought up his wand, and he collected himself, his mind swallowing mine whole, as high-tide swallowing broken driftwood.

"You are fragile, my lord," Severus said quietly, walking closer, as I slumped against the wall, eyes rolling back into my head at the unmanageable pain. My mind was unmoored and I was frothing at the mouth, losing control over even the most basic of physiological functions.

He gently plucked yew from my loose clasp, and pressed his wand to my throat, and I was sad that the last sight granted me was the intense hatred commingled with pity on his face.

"Severus!"

Worry flitted across his features, though it was a voice he should have been happy to hear. The Order stormed in, Dumbledore at its head. Even through the web of Severus's grip on my mind, I sensed their jubilation and thrill at the sight of me pinned against a wall, deprived of wand and aid.

"We should kill him," Severus said hastily, raising his wand again.

"Step aside, Severus."

There was no give in Dumbledore's voice. His magic reminded me of nights dispossessed in the high Urals. Shirking away from Dumbledore, I clung to Severus' magic, that was passionate in its hatred, scorching me, and I wondered if they might set me on fire. They had destroyed the diadem with Fiendfyre, hadn't they?

Severus stood between me and the Order, his grim, unlovely face betraying his honest worry for once in our interactions. I wanted to die at his hands, I decided. I did not want Dumbledore to touch me. I heard the sirens of Aurors from the gardens. No, no, I did not wish to be taken alive, to the Unspeakables, to the Aurors, or to Dumbledore.

"Step aside," Dumbledore said sharply, walking to Severus and placing a cautionary hand on Severus's arm.

"Severus, please!" I begged him, frightened out of my wits when I saw Dumbledore's expression. He meant to torture me. Not all torture was physical. He meant to torture me. My mind, scattered and powerless, flailed about until Severus exerted more of his will to capture it in a soothing prison once again.

"He did not spare Lily," Dumbledore reminded him crisply. "You begged him."

Lily? I tried to rack my memories. Who was Lily? My confusion must have been evident to Severus, because resignation touched his grimness.

"Who was Lily?" I wondered, in Parseltongue, unable to structure conversation in English, and Dumbledore's expression showed no reaction.

"Lily was my mother," a young voice said then.

Harry Potter. Harry Potter's mother. I remembered her well. She had killed me, she had flung me out of my body, and I had wandered until I had become no longer myself, until I had lost my sanity and my kingdom as Nebuchadnezzar had.

Why had Severus begged for her life? Two children playing on swings, two children who had loved. The few times I had been able to break into his mind, I had seen him thinking of a red-haired woman. Oh, it was her. It was her!

It had been love, then. I thought of Tom, still safely behind Lucius's blood wards, though I had been confronted scarce a handful of steps away from him. _Not my boy_ , she had begged me that night, before we had both died. He needed time to escape. They would have surrounded the manor. I hoped that Lucius saw to his safety. All I could do was buy time, whether it be with my death or my torture or my capture, keeping their attention on me. Severus knew what lay behind me, but he was bound still by vow. My death would end their adventure, and I was in no state to fight out, with my torn mind barely capable of coherence.

I struggled to gather my thoughts into skeins, as Dumbledore raised his wand.

"Severus, please," I begged once more. He was not a malicious man by nature, and he was too passionate to be capable of Dumbledore's orchestrated cruelty.

"You want him to kill. You are begging him to split his soul for you," Dumbledore stated. Behind him, the Order conversed among themselves restlessly.

I did not set store by Dumbledore's long-held theory that killing splintered a soul. Magic was based on intent. My mind was hazy and I was light-headed in the face of whatever judgement Dumbledore wanted to hand down.

"Give him his wand," Dumbledore ordered. Severus frowned, but he threw my wand at my feet.

"Pick it up," Dumbledore said quietly. "Let us duel."

I had done that to Harry Potter in the graveyard. I had asked Wormtail to fling the boy's wand at him, I had forced the wounded boy to duel me, much to the horror of the Death Eaters who were unnerved by seeing their insane master command a child to fight for its life. It had been havoc, and it had taken me years to win back loyalty after that episode.

I felt their gloating eyes on me, as I fell to my knees to gather the wand to me. A familiar thread of magic wove strength through me, as the wand's own protectiveness for its master leapt once it was safely in my hold. I braced against the pillar and dragged myself up, trying to keep my gaze on Dumbledore, though my thoughts wavered so, with my poor neurons frayed by Severus's prolonged siege on my mind.

"I am cutting off the spell, my lord," Severus said cautiously, though he did not know how to perform a withdrawal from anyone's mind with grace. His withdrawal was sharp, nothing like Tom's careful and surgical maneuvers. I inhaled sharply as my vision blacked out for a moment. Will and agency came crashing in, and I realized the magnitude of my fate.

"In your right mind now, aren't you?" Dumbledore asked, smiling humorlessly.

There was pity and judgement in his eyes. Across us stood Harry Potter, terrified. He was surrounded by many Order members. I registered the sounds of duels outside. Bella must have managed to muster forces somehow. I wondered if they would throw her into Azkaban again. A death sentence would be kinder.

"I cannot duel you," I said hoarsely, wiping my mouth on the back of my sleeve. When Severus had overpowered me, I had lost control of my physiology. I smelled piss and I felt the stickiness of saliva on my chin still. I resisted the urge to expend precious magic on a cleaning charm. They had already seen me brought low. Acknowledging it would only broadcast my humiliation. Best let them think I was beyond such shame, though I had to suppress the memories it triggered, of street thugs holding me down in the public loo underground beneath Newburn when I had been all of nine; I had cried, and piss and cigarette ashes had stung my eyes and stained my mouth.

"I would not be satisfied by merely killing you, I confess," Dumbledore declared, his eyes all too knowing.

My mind was unspooled; little wonder that Dumbledore and Severus were careful to keep the others further away, what with my thoughts and memories pell-mell cloaking me, magic unto itself. It was surprising that I hadn't turned in on myself, demented. Then again, as those long years had proven, my will was stronger than my mind.

"How many did you bring?" I asked, knowing that my sole chance was to delay. He could never resist a patronizing speech or two.

"All of the Order," he replied smugly. He knew what I was attempting to do, and he was making it clear that he was humoring me only because it amused him. It did not matter. Pride was least of my concerns, and the farthest from my control.

"And the entire contingent of Aurors," he continued.

There were forty in the Manor, under Bella. There had been little time to gather forces. I could summon more, but I knew this battle was lost. Increasing the toll would avail me little. I needed them to focus on me, to bring me down, buying the boy protection and time.

One hundred and twenty from the Order. Five hundred Aurors.  
I stared at him. He was not on the best of terms with the Minister.

"You cast the Imperius on Cornelius," I speculated, surprised at my lack of surprise. Around him, the Order members shifted uneasily.

"For the greater good," he said flatly. "I doubt Cornelius will hold that against me when I drag you into his Atrium."

That was true. Dimly, I thought of Achilles, stripping his opponents and tethering them to his chariot's wheels, blackening their face in soot and dust, dragging them over rock and sand and mud, killing them without granting them a warrior's end, letting the carrion crows feast on their uncremated corpses.

Dumbledore bowed to me, his eyes blazing in an anger that had steeped without redressal over the decades. I was not his amour who had been allowed to surrender, who had been imprisoned and left to die without indignity. He would spare me nothing, I knew.

"Bow, Tom," he mocked, when I remained standing as I was, still disorientated to attempt moving away from the pillar that I braced myself against. "Has nobody taught you how to duel?"

My mind was untethered and caught a glimpse of Harry Potter's awakening triumph, bearing an emotion darker than Dumbledore's righteous anger. There were worse executioners than Dumbledore.

"Imperio," murmured Dumbledore, and his magic blazed along the easy conduits that Severus's Legilimency had left, searing me to my blood vessels, striving to force my will to bend to his.

That curse had never worked before. I suspected that Harry Potter's resistance to it came from my own, marked by my magic as the boy was. Dumbledore knew all this. He was only proving a point. I shook his magic off, though I tasted it in the back of my throat, and trembled in nausea induced by the reach and feel of it.

He raised his wand again. I cast a shield charm, automatically, and his spell hit the shield in a riotous explosion of colours. It was not lethal, but it had elements of slavery and surrender etched into it. For the first time, I realized murkily that I had severely underestimated the judgement he would pronounce on me.

"No flashy magic? No serpents?" He asked, tracing my shield with exploratory magic, trying to measure the strength and density of it along the contours. He waved his wand in arc, and it sliced neatly through the girth of my shield, leaving it gaping open. I cast again, but he sliced the next shield to shreds, and it continued in that manner, as he waved away with amusement each of my increasingly weaker shields. I knew I was in no shape to mount an attack; my grace in movement was gone and without my agility and dexterity, I had lost the duel before it began.

"Stand and duel, Tom," he mocked me again, recalling the graveyard once again. There was pity on Severus's face, mixed with a hatred nursed over decades. "Stop shielding. How long can you shield? Fight me like a real wizard. Accept your fate."

"Crucio!" I cried out, if only to pander to him awhile, flinching when he deflected it back within an inch of where I stood. I saw the warning. The next time, he would deflect it upon me.

Heeled footsteps rushed into the hall. Narcissa. Her skirts were scorched from spell-fire, there were gashes on her hands and face, and she looked as if she had eaten death many times over since dawn. She had come for the boy, I knew. Then she saw me, standing between the Order and the warded doors, and hope fled her.

"Narcissa," Dumbledore greeted her politely. Her eyes darted about the room, cornered.

"Tell us what lies behind those doors, won't you?" Dumbledore asked her, though his gaze was still fixed on me. She did not reply. Her wand was aloft, her face grim, and I saw Druella's child. Her sister and her niece stood there, their wands fixed on her, and she did not flinch.

"Long ago, I came to an orphanage, and attempted to chide a thief for purloining what belonged to others," Dumbledore said. I suppressed a flinch, knowing the next spell that would leave his wand. Fire burst from its tip, white and fierce, and enveloped the doors I guarded. Blood soaked down the edges of the doors, activating those wards.

"Warded by blood," Dumbledore said quietly. "Taken a lesson from Lily Potter, haven't you?" He thought it was my blood. He had me in his clutches. Narcissa needed to escape. She was no Malfoy by blood, but she was one by rituals of marriage. I did not know if the wards recognized her.

"Crucio!" I cast again, trying to buy time, knowing well that the curse would rebound, and yet when it did, I screamed in anguish. I had always been powerful; my curse sliced down my exhausted nerve-endings and my eyes burned with tears. When the curse began waning, I found myself on my hands and knees, panting, trembling and choking down whimpers of pain. I shoved myself back to my knees, and stumbled to my feet again, determined to keep what vestiges of dignity remained to me.

"You are a mess," Dumbledore remarked, conjuring a purple-dotted handkerchief and floating it to me. I let it fall at my feet. House-elves came to Narcissa and spirited her away, too fast for Severus's curses. Clever woman! I felt the wards shift behind me. She had retrieved the boy. I suspected that Dumbledore would not have noticed, given that my magic and trauma obscured the more subtle wavering of the wards.

"Crucio," I said quietly, though my voice shook from exhaustion. He raised his eyebrows and deflected it upon me again, but I closed my eyes and surrendered to the pain, welcoming it into my lungs, letting it batter my heart, and it was almost enough to stop my heart, before Severus ran to Dumbledore and whispered, alarm coloring his surprised features. A hasty stabilization spell came my way. I recognized Severus's magic.

"The Cruciatus, if unresisted, stops the heart," Severus explained, his face pale.

"Trying to kill yourself?" Dumbledore asked, eyes showing no mercy, as he disarmed me. "You have done nothing to deserve that reprieve, don't you think?

He walked to me, and cast a slashing spell across my right palm. Grabbing the bleeding appendage, he placed it against the doors behind me. The doors opened, and we saw an empty room, bare but for the small birdcage that was on the ground in the middle, and its door was open.

Narcissa had always been the quietly dramatic one, I thought dimly, even caught in the throes of my pain. Severus stooped over, grabbed my arm and healed my palm, no doubt determined to keep me alive until I tasted justice. Harry Potter's mother. Love, I remembered. Possession failed because love had shielded him. I tasted his dark triumph right then, as he watched me crippled and laid low. Marked as an equal. Why had I been able to possess him? Why could he talk to snakes? Why had I sensed more of me in him than in Tom?

"I don't understand," I murmured, trying to follow my thoughts to a conclusion that lingered in the distance. I was close, I thought. There was an explanation lurking in the facts.

"He is hallucinating again," Severus said darkly.

"I shall address that," Dumbledore said cheerfully, casting a stinging hex on my wrist, to jar me out of my thoughts. He was still looking over the room that had been warded. The house-elves had diluted all magic, and I knew he could not track further.

Then a disheveled Auror burst into the hall, a deteriorating Bubblehead charm on his head, his wand aloft, and he smelled of smoke.

"Nerve gas!" He exclaimed. "The remaining Death Eaters triggered reserves along the periphery of the grounds, and through all the fireplaces. They have managed to escape."

Bella. She had always been resourceful and suicidal. The Order members hastily cast Bubblehead charms to protect themselves.

"I wonder if you deserve to be saved," Dumbledore mused.

I smelled a slightly fruity odor. It was going to be fast, I knew. There would be involuntary symptoms within seconds for a human, and even my body crafted of magic would show signs within four to five minutes. Death would take half an hour.

"Constricted pupils," Dumbledore commented, watching me convulse.

"Tremors, sweating, drooling, urination, nausea, sobbing, blistering," he recounted patiently.

My robes were damp from sweat and saliva, from piss and bile. I was crying uncontrollably, and that it was only involuntary lachrymation from the reagent's effect mattered not. My skin burned and my tear ducts were bleeding. Dumbledore had a hand on Severus's wrist, preventing intervention. He placed a bubblehead charm on me graciously.

"You are not unaware of the second set of symptoms," he reminded me.

Losing control over gastrointestinal functions, failure of respiratory organs, suffocation, thrashing, paralysis. He would not let me die. However, he would hold me as close to death as I could be. He would keep me suspended a marionette to his magic. I had already begged Severus to kill me. He had refused.

"You want a vow," I asked, wondering what he wanted of me voluntarily that he could not take.

"You are broken in mind, body and soul. I doubt any vow you make magic will bind you to," he stated. "No, I want you to understand."

"Diffindo," he said, almost as an afterthought, pointing his dark wand at the yew he held.

And before spell light touched the white wood, I fainted, his act breaking me in ways that nothing before had.

\------------------

When I came to, I was in a dark cell. It was cold. There were no windows. I shoved myself up, walking to measure in paces the dimensions of the cell. The stones beneath me were old. I heard pipes in the walls. There was a cacophony of magic in the air. Hogwarts.

I had told Tom about Hogwarts. He had listened to my stories eagerly, but he had not seemed upset or resentful that he had been unable to go with Draco each year. He had been content in his life all along, despite the gilded prison, in ways I had never come near to. Had he escaped far enough? I hoped Bella had made it out to protect him. I trusted Narcissa. She placed family above all else, and Tom was family to her. Lucius might place Draco's safety above Tom's, but Narcissa would not. A mother did not choose.

It must be a temporary holding arrangement, I decided. The stones were too partial to me for it to be a wise idea. My mind, unmoored and splintered, sponged wild into the air sopping up old magic and feasting on it. My body trembled at the onslaught, too frail for this unregulated channeling. If I had a wand-

The door creaked open then. It was Severus. He gleamed in the darkness, with many charms of protection enveloping him.

"I had meant to kill you before they arrived," he said, and it sounded almost an apology.

Severus. Traitor. There was a woman. I had begged. Had I begged the woman? No, I had begged him. She had begged me. I rubbed my eyes, trying to ignore the whiplash of magic coursing through my body.

"There is too much magic," I said, giving up trying to comprehend what this man was to me, focusing on the immediate instead, articulating my most practical concern. "Cold."

His expression was pinched as he drew nearer. I sensed slabs of granite around his mind. And emotions trickled past. Perhaps it was due to how disintegrated my magic had become, dispersed as particles in the air itself, I tasted his pity and sorrow, embers of hatred and a dawning sense of respect.

"I think Dumbledore expects the magic to drive you mad," he admitted, standing over me. "I have been asked to ensure that the nerve reagent did not irrevocable effects."

"I am already mad," I pointed out, flinching when bright light burst from his wand-tip into my pupils.

"I need to brew additional potions," he said absently. "Muscular stiffness, blurred vision, failing diaphragm, neurological damage, heart palpitations." He chewed his lip. "They won't let me alleviate the less immediate symptoms. Here, swallow these potions."

"Why didn't you kill me?" I wondered, dutifully imbibing the two vials he gave me. "You hesitated."

He did not reply. His emotions, though, veered between self-recrimination and anger.

"How can one man hold boundless hate?" I asked, uncaring that my voice was hoarse. "I died for what I did to her. I lost my sanity. Now I am here in your clutches, at your mercy, denied death. What more should I suffer to sate you?"

\----------

As the days went by, I began to wonder. Severus was the only visitor, apart from a fearful house-elf that left me food thrice a day. I was mostly prone on the cot, shaking in the grip of convulsions brought on by the after-effects of the reagent, raving mad with my magic unable to distinguish itself from the castle's cacophony. Hallucinations left me weeping and railing, as I saw Tom hacked to pieces, as I saw his flayed body lying on Narcissa's dining table, as I saw him betrayed and gutted, as I saw werewolves under a full moon tearing his throat out. Cold seized my heart then, and the remnant of my soul rattled about for escape. There were raised voices. Dumbledore was angry. The other man was placating. And I was rising to my feet, for there was nothing else to do. Then my broken magic reared in self-preservation, and I smelled flesh and death, and I was warm. I lay back, exhausted, closing my eyes and relishing the warmth in peace. I still smelled burning flesh, but that was Dumbledore's concern. I was not afraid of sharing the cell with a corpse or two.

"Get up," Dumbledore grumbled, lowering himself primly to sit beside me.

I did not pay mind to him. There was very little he could do to me that being a graceful prisoner would spare me from. Let him work to get the reactions he sought.

"That was the Minister," he continued in a disappointed manner. "You burned two of his Aurors alive. I don't know what you did to the Dementors guarding him. I was able to rescue him, though they will need to regrow his skin."

Tom was fussy about peeling away the skin before eating apples. Cornelius became an apple-man in my head.

"I am worried about your mind," Dumbledore said.

As if he was not doing his best to send it flying off a precipice of no return. I hoped that I died soon, that Tom had the sense to use one of the older Horcruxes to resurrect me if he chose, that he had the sense to hunt down and destroy all of the Horcruxes left if he wanted to give me the mercy of an ending. I was tired of madness, but if he wanted me to live, I would not refuse. Left to me, I would have asked for an ending complete.

"He wants you in Azkaban, in Ministry custody," Dumbledore said. "I persuaded him to continue this arrangement."

"Legilimens," he said, almost as if wishing me a good evening. My mind was too afloat on the castle's magic for him to pinpoint a trail of thought. My world was a riot of colours, and I was dimly reminded of the out of body experiences I had back in the seventies; I had been paying a Muggle chemist in Belfast to cook me LSD.

Dumbledore cut off the spell.

"Perhaps a more grounded approach is called for," he remarked.

I turned to look at him curiously. Direct physical torture was beneath him, or so he had professed over many decades. My vision was blurred but my magic tasted weariness and alarm. Strategies.

"You have a war on your hands," I stated.

"Stragglers," he said, flippant, though I tasted the lie. "Easily put down. Merely a favor to Cornelius."

"I have always known when I am lied to," I said unnecessarily, and it seemed as if we were in a different time. "You have a war on your hands." Fear and pride rose in me as I realized the identity of the only figurehead that might have united the different factions I had managed to build an alliance across.

"Narcissa Malfoy did not seem the sort to stage a coup," Dumbledore said casually, though his keen curiosity colored the air between us. There was urgency too. Little wonder he had lowered himself to Legilimency.

"I shall leave you in Harry's care, until I return," he said, getting to his feet slowly and making his way out.

Ah, he considered physical torture beneath him. Harry Potter, however, was grieving and angry, and had been marked by my magic.

\-------

I woke abruptly to unbearably bright light, pouring out of every stone and crevice, from the ceiling and from the walls, from the ground. I closed my eyes shut, but my eyelids were too thin to provide protection. It continued, no matter where I turned, no matter that I brought my hands to cup my eyes, no matter that I sought to escape into the farthest reaches of my broken mind. Sleep was beyond reach.

Then the sounds began, high in pitch and discordant, unending. The sensory assault wracked my nerves which were already in tatters after prolonged exposure to the reagent. I clawed my wrists and thighs bloody to keep myself focused, to keep myself grounded.

My food was laced lightly with hallucinogens and depressants, at varying dosages, never enough to be irrevocably physically debilitating. My mind, already ungrounded in the chaos of the castle's magic, was suspended in a state of unbearable anguish from which there was no escape, neither through sleep nor through pain. My control over my emotions, ever paltry since coming to this body, slipped completely, and I found myself weeping and screaming myself hoarse for no reason I could pinpoint. The room veered from being brutally cold to scorching hot. I did not know if it was physical reality or my own mind.

When Harry Potter stepped in through the door, I had lost all sense for time and context, and I saw only his mother.

"Stand aside, you foolish woman," I said in Parseltongue, and my mouth was too small for my swollen, bleeding tongue.

His scar was bleeding trails of red down his pale face. Scar. I had marked him as an equal. He had grown into a man. How long ago had it been? Was I not in Albania still? He spoke my tongue. Why?

"I thought we might practice writing today," he said, walking to me boldly and offering me a quill. I had seen its like before. They had been popular in my youth, I remembered vaguely, to profess eternal love to each other among teenagers.

He was my keeper until Dumbledore returned. My eyes were too unfocused to write. What did he want me to write? A letter to Narcissa asking her to surrender? A stream of consciousness that betrayed how insane I had become?

I had bitten my nails to the flesh and my throat was too dry to speak. He swished his wand to tug me upright, and then he swished it again to strip me of my old, torn robes. I shivered as the cold stones touched my bare skin.

"I must not tell lies," he said, pointing at my right knee. Magic clashed in the room. His own, blazing and hateful, channeled through his phoenix wand, was more potent than the Castle's magic dispersed with shreds of mine. Writing on skin with a blood quill, so close to bone, on a surface already dried from constant exposure to the cold, was exquisite agony. My blood was slow to surface.

"Cold-blooded," he remarked, standing against the far wall, watching me with glassy eyes. He was in equal pain, I knew, and his scar was violently inflamed. His hands were clenched into fists and his knuckles were white.

What was he? The Dark Lord will mark him as an equal. I stared at his scar, though it hurt to focus.

"You are writing in Parseltongue," he muttered, throwing a stinging hex my way. He was holding a blood-soaked kerchief to his forehead. "Start again. In English, this time."

Perhaps, he had become as obsessed with my fate as I had been once with his. I brought my mind forcibly to the subject of his existence. What was he?

"I didn't say you could stop," he shouted, furious, quicksilver in his temperament, volatile in his magic. He marched over, placed his wand to my right ear, and shouted, "Sectumsempra!"

I screamed and he screamed with me, as he doubled over clutching his head in his hands. It did not stop his rage, as he stumbled back towards me and cast the spell again on my genitals, tearing me from navel to perineum, in an unholy mimicry of caesarian section delivery that I had once seen a Muggle doctor perform.

"Bellatrix Lestrange said I should _want_ to cause pain," he said, drained of color by pain and fear, and he cast his first successful Cruciatus.

Something tore, and I wondered dimly if it was my limbs or his scar, but no, I was confusing the physical with the mental in my endless ocean of pain that was conjoined to his. There, in the cell, was another presence, alike to us both, blurring us at the edges into each other, familiar and regretted, known and mourned, made through my unmaking that night. I clutched at that truth, at that ephemeral presence, and I clung to my horcrux as others clung to their Patronus. Summoning my magic into a semblance of coherency, focusing on the pain, I dragged Harry's wand out of his hand and cast hasty sutures on his scar and my abdomen, so that we would not die of blood loss. My ear was beyond my limited knowledge of healing. The horcrux lingered between us, confused by our animosity, for it was much a part of him as it was of me.

The wand worked for me as well as my own had. Shared cores. Everything made sense finally. I threw the wand back at the boy, though my heart grieved to give it up.

"Summon Severus," I told him, closing my eyes shut and forcing myself not to cup my ear to catch the blood and tissue that seeped out of the canal.

\-----

"How can you be angry still?" I asked Severus mindlessly, when he had drugged me soporific to dull the pain as he worked his spells of healing.

His voice was soothing as he chanted in an ancient language, a song that stitched my flesh together much better than my hasty suturing spell had.

"It will scar permanently, but I have been forbidden to provide any more than life-saving aid," he muttered, peering at the long red gashes. "If you could have summoned his wand at any time, why the hell did you wait until he carved you up like a bloody turkey?"

"I want to die," I confessed. "I hate being mad. I hate having to question the veracity of my memories. I hate that I don't remember."

"You could have died if you didn't get Potter to summon me," he pointed out, sneaking a potion bottle from his pouch and daubing the contents delicately on my wounds. Dittany. I doubted that he had permission to use it on me.

Yes, I could have died. The horcrux had changed the game. The boy's magic was affected by his rage. He would be easier to possess this time around, unprotected by love as he was. If I took out Harry Potter, I would have won the war for Tom. Dumbledore was no wartime leader, egotistical as he was when it came to cooperating with the Ministry. He preferred dueling evil alone. Tom, unlike me, was not a figurehead many would despise on sight. Narcissa would ensure that he was liked.

"They took Azkaban today," Severus muttered, shining light into my ear canal and peering in worry. He had taken care to ensure that he spoke to my other ear. Ears were important for balanced gait. I wondered if I would able to walk again without the assistance of magic. "We will need a specialist from St. Mungo's."

"Azkaban?"

"Narcissa sent a letter today, demanding you in return for the prisoners they took. There was a battle. They took a prize team of Aurors alive. Kingsley. Scrimgeour. Tonks. And twelve others."

Severus's magic was gentle, as he cauterized the bleeding vessels in my ear. His touch was fleeting and light on my skin as he shifted me to an easier position.

"I will ask Dumbledore if we can bring in a healer," he said, though doubt pervaded him. "Can you slip into your robes if I hold them up?"

My magic reached out unconsciously and licked the edges of his concern, and found endless sorrow and self-recrimination, and a grudging fondness. Then there was surprise as he saw the scar tissue on my knee.

"A blood quill?" He wondered, sounding disgusted, tracing the edges of the words with a callused finger. "Potter is unhinged. His girlfriend was killed in one of the Order's raids last week." His finger skittered over the Parseltongue, and I felt it looping and curling over the words.

"Tom is very young," he said quietly. "Albus has won many wars. And where it matters, he has the Ministry behind him. You must hold on, if you are buying him time."

"I am alive, aren't I?"

"You must hold your mind," he said shortly, his face twisted in horror. "Your cognisance is what Dumbledore and the Ministry want. If you are irrevocably insane, they have no use for you. They will focus on the war completely. And being tortured inexpertly by Potter does nothing to aid your cause."

I knew that. I flailed at the thought of keeping cognisance. Reality was a fast deteriorating state I had no desire to suffer. The more lucid I was, the more creative their responses would be. And yet, in drawing their attention upon me, I would buy time for Tom.

"Kill me at the end," I said, and wondered that it sounded like an order than the plea it was. He did not take umbrage, instead shaking his head sadly.

"Even if by chance the boy manages to win, he will need you. Everyone will try to depose him, to assassinate him, to hold him captive until he surrenders your secrets."

I doubted that an insane, infirm shell would prove to be useful, but sacrifice had its own magic, as Harry Potter's mother had taught me.

\-----------

I tried to keep possession of my lucidity. I succeeded more often than not, because Tom's dead face on a pyre was enough to jolt my wandering mind to the present.

It was as Severus had said. I became more interesting to my captors once I had my mind. I tasted savage interest in the magic around me when I reacted to their doings and words. When I showed shame and pain, I kept their attention affixed on me. None of it required pretence. Once my mind was reared in with effort, all I knew was shame and pain.

Dumbledore's Legilimency returned stronger and stronger, as he fought me for my mind. Harry Potter had become an expert caster of curses that gave me prolonged pain, that turned my muscles stiff and spasmodic, that made my limbs creak, and I was no more than a marionette dancing at the tip of his wand, crying until I lost consciousness. The Aurors and the Minister were more methodical about their torture, waiting patiently until each stage of the drama was enacted to their tastes, until I had given them the necessary reaction, until I had begged for a reprieve.

Of all of them, I preferred Dumbledore, because while he was dogged in his pursuit of my mind's secrets, physical or emotional torment was decidedly beneath him. At times, he spoke to me absently as if I was an equal, as if we were not captor and captive. I hearkened to his conversations, if only because my torn mind found joy in coherency and continuity.

Severus's visits increased over the days, as I found myself teetering on the edge of death more and more frequently. The embers of his hatred had nearly died out, and I tasted only a dash of it every now and then. Instead, there was an ocean of sorrow and respect. So was this what it took to gain this man's loyalty? An easy submission to various flavors of torture?

"What did that fool boy do now?" He asked thickly, his hand gentle as he daubed ointments over the raised flesh.

"Oh, he was inspired to mark me, as I marked him," I said, rubbing my eyes to keep myself awake while he ministered to my wounds. "Then he received recommendations from his cronies in the Aurors, and rather became side-tracked."

Perhaps men took to domesticating dogs because there was a canine in every man. They had marked their territory as dogs do, and I had barely kept it together to not fall into old memories where I had been held down by thugs in Newburn's underground lavatories. They had taken me out to the Forbidden forest, because even with Dumbledore's wards, the Castle magic was predictably protective of me, often stepping in quixotic ways that never sufficed to save me but inconvenienced them nevertheless. They had splayed me on a tree stump and taken turns. I dimly remembered that there was a giant that bore resemblance to Hagrid waiting there with a demented grin. And at the end, Harry Potter had branded me on my forehead. I had lost consciousness by then, as tended to happen when he was proximate, the Horcrux in him determined to spare me all that the boy himself wished to inflict.

"What is the mark?" I asked Severus curiously, and seeing the angry spike in his magic, wondered if I was better off not knowing. He did not reply, instead taking one of my hands in his and slowly tracing my fingers over the raised flesh on my cheek, so that I could make out the shape myself.

Kaunan. The rune for pain and mortality, an abode of mortification. Severus moved my hand so that he could daub more paste onto it, his movements as brisk and efficient as ever.

"Drink this," he said, bringing a flask to my mouth. It was brandy.

"What-"

"You will need it," he said grimly. "I was not allowed to bring in numbing potions today. Potter gave me explicit instructions that he wanted you lucid for the aftermath, since you didn't do him the favor to stay so during the events."

When he spread my legs and began healing my genital area, I closed my eyes tightly and wished that I could fall unconscious again.

"He wants you to describe this to them, in detail," Severus said, pinching a nerve in my thigh to jar me back to the present.

Harry Potter liked to dose me up as high as a kite on aphrodisiacs, on the days he did not dose me with hallucinogens or depressants. I felt I was a cardiac arrest away from his experiments on most days, as I soared on hormones and toxins as I had never before in my life. He liked me craven, particularly when there were a dozen or so Aurors to watch him leash me, to watch me beg and cry. He liked me speared open on cock, and he liked casting the Cruciatus then, watching me convulse and thrash, watching me struggle to hold my physiological impulses under tight control. My magic was a threnody all its own, and only the Horcrux's proximity kept it reined, kept us all alive, for my magic wanted nothing more than to bring the Castle down upon our heads.

"It would be better if you left the site open to heal overnight," Severus muttered.

I shrugged. I had been very modest once, I remembered, before they had taken it away inch by inch, until I had forgotten what it meant to be clothed and in possession of privacy.

"I don't understand why Albus lets this go on," Severus continued, busying himself with putting away his tools and vials.

I suspected that Dumbledore knew of the horcrux. He was betting that the torment they subjected me to would awaken the horcrux, juxtaposing its desires to protect me against Harry Potter's desire to hurt me, thus separating its essence from him, so that it might be safe to finally separate the souls. Crimes against me mattered not if that meant Dumbledore could save Harry Potter from being destroyed for carrying my soul.

\----

There erupted outright civil war in Britain. Tolls were high on both sides, and they took to a scorched earth policy to keep each other from supply lines. As Weasley after Weasley fell, Harry Potter took out his grief on me, until I knew no longer which of the acts he perpetrated were real and which were constructs of my paranoid mind.

A day before Halloween, they took the Ministry. The Minister was captured alive. They offered him in return for me. Interim Minister Amelia Bones declared, with Dumbledore's support, that there would be no negotiations with terrorists. They retreated to Scotland, where Dumbledore's magic held the mountains and the coastlines, and the war pursued them north, trench by trench.

Dumbledore knew that Narcissa's army was led by Death Eaters, that Narcissa herself was only a figurehead for another behind the scenes. He speculated that this must be someone who had been loyal to me, for why would Bella take up arms for them otherwise? Why would they choose to offer a trade each time they captured a valuable captive? No, this was not a purely political campaign. Legilimency had served him nothing, as he fumbled through the holocaust of my mind. More and more, he left me to Potter's care, and I suffered for it.

On New Year's Eve, I was dragged to Aberdeen, to the cold steel city, and in the light of the full moon, tethered to a ward stone. Dumbledore raised ancient magic, of blood and soil, and they chanted together. It was fell and beautiful, and I watched them bewitched as green flames soared through the circle and touched the skies themselves, rushing down the coastline, creating a rim of protection that they could not breach.

"Flesh of the servant, willingly given," they called, and Minerva McGonagall cut off her arm boldly, unflinching, for she was no coward. They threw the limb onto the fire that blazed blue.

"Bones of the father, unknowingly given," they summoned, and dust came soaring to Dumbledore's command from inland. I smelled ancient magic, the magic of Merlin himself. The flames were as crimson as my eyes.

"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken," they chanted, and Harry Potter came to me to open my robes and cut a thin line across my navel. He caught the dark blood in a calabash and raised it to me in mocking toast, no doubt remembering the graveyard. He poured my blood over the flames, and they seared my eyelids bright as they leapt to whiteness.

I felt tears running down my face, for once not due to the horrors of captivity. No, they had sealed me within these wards with my own blood. There was no escape, as long as the siege was unbroken. How would Tom even mount an attack against these wards? They ran around the entire coastline, and they enclosed a dome over the skies. Dumbledore had given up the war for now, wanting to bolster his forces and allies before he waged another battle. Tom, on the other hand, had the task of rallying a war torn country to his banner. He had to ensure that they were fed and sheltered, that they were bribed enough to support him as a lawful leader. I saw Dumbledore's ploy. He was waiting for goodwill to turn against and depose Tom, so that he could then rally the commoners to his cause and take back the Ministry and London.

Dumbledore looked tired as he attended to Minerva. Amelia Bones was there, though her eyes were grimly fixed on the white flames that had not died out yet. Severus was there too, applying various potions to Minerva's wound. Harry Potter came to fetch me and dragged me to them. He did not close my robes and I was still bleeding. I felt lightheaded, from the bloodless and the cold. Perhaps I ought to close the robes, but he reacted negatively if I showed agency towards any act that preserved my modesty. While I did not think he would strip me before Dumbledore, he was high on ritual magic and I did not want to test him right then, tired and desperate as I was. I needed to preserve my mind a while longer.

"Crying already? Conjure a hand for her," he ordered, giving me his wand. He enjoyed the thrill that pervaded my mind and magic when I touched a wand so akin to mine. He enjoyed it more when he plucked it out of my hands afterwards.

"I have not cast anything as complex as that in months," I said, looking at the empty arm-socket that I faced. Her lips were thin and her face pale, but she stood there bravely without tears. I wished that I had her courage. Harry Potter and his Aurors assured me that I wept as a virgin maid.

"Do you want me to inspire you, _Tom_?" Potter asked me.

Minerva looked at me curiously, despite the pain. Did she expect me to react to that name? Potter called me far worse when we were in less august company. My body bore scars in English and Parseltongue of the names he had christened me with, all inked patiently with a blood quill. I had become inured to them, had even lapsed occasionally into responding to those names, much to Severus's revulsion and pity.

"And close your robes," Potter ordered. "Have you no shame? I apologize, Minerva, he gets off on it."

Severus flinched but I decided not to rise to that bait. I was humiliated. So far, it had always been before men. Somehow, it seemed more debasing to be in this state before a woman. I focused and used Potter's wand to shape an arm of gold. It shone in the moonlight, reflecting the white flames as once Baal's statue had in the valleys before the great mount of Sinai. She exclaimed in surprise as it moulded to her body, to her cerebral system.

"That is splendid magic," Dumbledore remarked, despite Potter's snarl. "You have always excelled at alchemy."

Minerva rushed to Amelia Bones to show her the limb, no doubt discomfited by my work for all that she was glad to have a functioning hand restored.

Potter snatched his wand back. Then he said mildly, "We had best be going then. There is a party by the edge of the wards. I promised I would bring you along to entertain them."

There was something he was not saying.

"There are enemy soldiers on the other side of the wards, Potter," Severus cut in. "Are you sure it is wise to enrage them in that manner?"

"Merely giving them ideas on what they should have done to him long ago," Potter said brightly. "It is a cold night. They can be entertained too."

Soldiers on the other side. Men and women who had fought for me. Tom's army. Perhaps Tom himself was there. The thought of him, of anyone else who had fought for me, seeing me abused sent me whirling into panic. My magic flared in alarm and Severus glared at me when my mind began dissolving wildly into the air, propelled by ritual magic.

The magic of my horcrux stood between us agonized. I saw Dumbledore's sharp gaze. I was running out of time. Dumbledore must have realized that the souls had turned disparate.

"Harry, there is a small matter we ought to address first," Dumbledore intervened, casting an easy breathing charm on me to help calm my panic attack. He wanted to dispose of the horcrux safely.

I closed my eyes and let my magic run to the wards. I had not studied wards, though there had been a Goblin in Palermo who had tried to teach me so long ago. I did not recollect any of it. Yet, now was no time to hesitate. Merlin's magic was neutral to my intent. My own blood hearkened to me. And there was Minerva's flesh - but it was less potent than the other substances in the wards. I had to overcome Dumbledore's casting. At the best of my abilities, it might have been feasible, but I had to trust that I could overcome power with sacrifice.

I called to the horcrux, desperate, praying that its quest to survive would sacrifice its container. There was no answer, but I could not belabor. I needed to get closer to the wards. My heart sunk as I thought of what I had to do. Influencing the horcrux was not easy, but influencing Potter himself was. I caught his gaze and glared at him, knowing well how he responded to _disobedience_.

"I will return by midnight," Potter promised Dumbledore. "They are waiting for me now."

He hooked his arm in mine and dragged me across to the edge of the wards, where through the white flames I could see an army amassed. I smelled werewolves under the full moon. Oh, however had Tom managed to persuade them? I was proud of him. Then Potter had flung me to the hard ground by the fire over which a deer was roasting on a spit. Once they had hogtied me over a fire, rolling over around and around, lower and lower, until I had begged. I hoped they limited their creativity this night. I needed to preserve my strength. I needed to preserve whatever remained of my modesty.

Potter backhanded me and sent me flying back to the ground when I attempted to get up.

"On your knees," he ordered, and around us the soldiers watched in suppressed excitement. I could sense magic from beyond the wards, tense magic that betrayed shock and fear.

Potter sat down folding his legs neatly beneath him. He had always exuded a certain grace of economy to his movements, reminding me of Sirius Black. He accepted a tumbler of whisky from one of his Aurors. He led them well, from what I had seen. They hearkened to him, to his bloodthirstiness, to his clever games that involved me. I had until midnight. I had to trust that soldiers would prepare for battle on the other side, that they would realize I was manipulating Potter to bring us closer to the wards.

"You were flashing your bits at Minerva earlier," he mocked. "Take off your clothes, if you are so bloody keen to be gawked at."

In the firelight, there was no place to hide. I gritted my teeth and did as he asked.

He crooked his finger in beckoning. "Crawl," he enunciated, his eyes fixed on the white flames, as if seeing through them to the shocked faces that were behind the wards.

When I crawled to him, he upended the glass on my face, and I reared back in agony as the alcohol burned my eyes.

"Lick my boots," he ordered. I was glad that my eyes were scrunched shut from the burn still.

"It is your birthday, isn't it? I have a gift for you."

I felt foreboding rise in me. His drawl had a tinge of relish to it, as if he had planned this awhile. I continued licking the dirty canvas though, because I knew to stop would mean consequences I little desired. He had little compunction about throwing me to the Aurors when he felt that I had spoiled his entertainment.

"Put your hands to good use, won't you, my ugly slut?" He crooned, rubbing behind my ears in a mockery of affection. "Hold your arse open."

Usually, that was a precursor to having many men line up to take me. Sometimes, he had more perverse ideas, such as stuffing me full of aphrodisiacs or stimulants, or bringing beasts magical and nonmagical. My fingers trembled and I felt tears down my face; my magic was tensed and I almost choked on a sob.

"Here it comes," he murmured, shifting his hands to hold me down. I stilled and jerked responsively but he pressed down. And then there was agony, as fire touched my flesh.

"I have marked your skin. I wanted to mark your flesh," he said, as he held me through my thrashing and cries of pain. "Chattel, cattle, slave; and you marked me as an equal. Happy birthday, darling."

He frowned when he felt my pulse stutter.

"Oh, you are so desperate to have Snape to put his yellow hands on you, faking illnesses to get him to touch you," he accused me, dragging me to my feet, holding my waist when he realized I was wobbling. He moved me out of the firelight, closer to the wards, closest that we had come. I summoned my strength and magic once more, drawing upon the last of my reserves, turning the unendurable pain into focus, and I fell, dragging him with me onto the wards. I felt my skin burning. He looked disorientated for a moment, and I placed a hand around his throat to choke him, and used the other to claw the scar open, pouring my magic into it, awakening the horcrux. I was too weak to possess him, but the horcrux had fed off him. I was surrounded by Aurors, who were trying to cast, but the horcrux's magic hung black and heavy upon us.

"Kill us both," I begged the horcrux in Parseltongue. "Kill us both and feed the wards. Tom is waiting outside. He will save you."

"You filthy slut!" Potter screamed, throwing me off, further into the wards, and I screamed as I burned. Between us the Horcrux's magic held heavy. Potter went for his wand, and then he fell to his knees, clutching his scar.

I had no weapon. Dumbledore was rushing towards us, his face full of anger and worry. Severus and Minerva were following. I grabbed Potter and rolled us both into the flames. We were burning flesh and clothes and hair. Potter's wand exploded into many colours, and its breaking sent agony through my veins just as it did Potter's. The wards broke and fell, and I lay there in soot and charnel, holding Potter's corpse against me, but I was still alive. The horcrux! It had sacrificed itself for me. I choked on smoke and tears, and convulsed in the cold night air. Around me were werewolves and vampires and sorcerers, and I held Potter's corpse tighter, begging death to claim me just as it had claimed him.

Dumbledore's summoning spell raced through the air. A shield charm rose over me, sure and steady. Bella's magic had a distinctive shade all its own.

"Get him out of here!" She yelled. "Get him to Narcissa!"

The Aurors were closer. I heard their boots thudding towards me. I felt one of them drag me from under Potter's corpse. His eyes had melted in their sockets. I vomited, but they did not care, pulling me away.

"Crucio!" Someone shouted, and the Auror holding me fell back in agony.

They would not kill, I knew, as long as I was in the midst of the fray. Dumbledore knew it too, because he had reached us, and he summoned me to him.

"That was quite clever," he told me, though his eyes held only hellfire as he stared at Potter's corpse.

"Let him go and I will let you escape!"

Tom. My boy - oh, I took in the sight of him as he rode across on a thestral. He was no boy. He was a man, hollowed out by grief and death. He was a man who had waged a war for years to save me. He stood before Dumbledore, and I could not protect him anymore.

"You had them reanimate your Horcruxes?" Dumbledore asked, revulsed. I sensed Fiendfyre burning at the tip of his wand. I struggled to find my magic, but it had been burned clean by the wards.

"Relashio!"

Dumbledore swerved away, and his wand fell from his hands. I scrambled back from him, trying to get myself upright. I needed to protect Tom. I needed to cover him. Wandless magic, fierce and unfocused, lashed out in waves from every pore of mine, flaying Dumbledore, and the smell of burning flesh assaulted my nostrils, but he stood his ground as he cast at me a hallucination charm. He had ever been the clever one. He knew how broken my mind was. Causing me hallucinations was the easiest way to break the last hooks I had to control over myself. I gritted my teeth to force myself to crawl and kneel between him and the boy.

He smiled, a macabre specter of burnt flesh and death, and began casting a spell to take my life without granting it a soul's end.

"Legilimens!" Tom called out, casting the spell that had been my original undoing.

No! No! I realized that I was shouting, that I was pleading, that I was shaking, but Dumbledore's eyes were vacant as he fell to the thrall of the spell.

Bella broke cover from their lines and rushed to me, standing between the Aurors and my broken body, as if there was anything left to save. I had greater concerns.

"Tom-" I mumbled, despairing that my vocal cords refused to cooperate with my mind. "Tom, he will overpower you. Don't underestimate him! Don't you see what he has done to me? Please! You must run! You must flee! There is no time!"

The boy did not look at me, focused on his task. Dumbledore's mind was still linked to mine, his repeated Legilimency over the years having carven paths through my mind, and I sensed the boy's mind deep within Dumbledore's, reaching out to mine. Whatever was he striving to do? Frightened, I tried to focus and break the spell.

"Trust me," the boy whispered, and reverberations coated me through Dumbledore's stolen will.

And I watched him weave magic as none before had, breaking the structures and tendrils of Dumbledore's mind softly and precisely, one by one, and using them to stitch together the ruptures in mine. Each neural pathway was brittle, but he wove a pathway where there had been only scorched ends. He imposed my will over Dumbledore's magic running deep in those stolen dendrites, making his mind diffuse until it was dissolved completely into mine. Cohesion flared across my mind, and with it returned reason.

"Expelliarmus!"

Blazing magic soared across from Minerva's wand, and I hastily rose to my feet to face her, shielding Tom physically form her spell. It hit me in the chest and I fell back to my knees, panting. I spared Dumbledore a glance, but he was as good as dead, his mind ruptured and his breaths fading.

"What have you done?" Dumbledore asked me, and for the first time I saw fear in his gaze as he looked at the boy, no doubt seeing an animated Horcrux akin to an Inferius or some vacant shell doing a Dark Wizard's bidding. "There are matters worse than death, Voldemort."

A shield charm enveloped me. Tom's magic.

The battle had begun. Bellatrix was shouting in glee, but she tended to be jubilantly vocal regardless of how it fared.

The boy was staring in horror at Dumbledore's shaking body, no doubt finally understanding what he had done.

"No!" Minerva murmured, looking heartsick for an instant before she covered it with detachment.

Before she could rally the Aurors to her, I touched the magic of her golden hand, seeking it to respond to its master, and I watched grimly as it choked her. The shield charm eased for its master; Tom had fought his way to me. I looked up at him, still on my knees. My vision had been blurred and poor for a long while, but the shape of his dear face made me want to cry. I held back my tears, instead choosing to gladly fall into his embrace as he pulled me up into his arms. He hastily took off his outer robes and helped me into them. The gesture brought tears to my eyes, but I bit my cheeks and forced myself to stay focused.

"Diffindo!" Cried out Amelia. She was behind Tom. I could not swerve around to take the curse, frail and broken as I was. He easily shielded. There were many Aurors behind her, I noticed in alarm. Death was necessary, not a shield charm. I had not seen Tom cast to kill yet. He had turned to face them, his wand lifted in defense. Desperately, I reached out to the closest wand, to Dumbledore's wand. It flew to my hand, purposeful and greedy.

Green shot from it, as if the spell was the wand's birthright, and Amelia fell limp to the ground. I shoved Tom to my side and took down the others, the wand singing death in a way mine never had. My wand had liked complex magic more than it had liked the Unforgivables. Elder. Tom's wand was of elder too, wasn't it?

Once the battle had mostly died down, Tom cast a final look about and nodded to himself, before pulling me to him and Apparating us away.

He took me to a garden path, where waited anxiously Narcissa Malfoy. Her eyes widened in shock, but she collected herself and clapped her hands to summon house-elves.

"Take them to Tom's rooms, please," she ordered.

They took us to a solarium. There was an English horn there, and sheets of music askew. There were his books and mine, interspersed on the study table. There was Tennyson's In Memoriam on his bed. He carefully led me to the bath. The house-elves had already run the water.

"Wait outside?" I asked him, suddenly ashamed of all that had happened. They had branded me like cattle, only meters away from him.

"Let me kiss you first," he asked, and there was desperation limning his gaze. There were tear tracks on his face. I let him kiss me softly.

He stepped back with a sad, jubilant smile. There was soot on his lips.

"I will wait for you outside," he said. "Call the house-elves if you need anything."

I had to run the bath four times before it came clear. I had not bathed since the day of my capture. My hygiene had been limited to cleansing spells and Severus's occasional attack with a basin of warm water and cleaning clothes. I did not even bother looking at myself, scrubbing fiercely where I could get away with it, and using my fingers to rub out the dirt from open wounds. Dumbledore's wand lay beside on the end-table, and I grieved for my broken wand. What had they done with it? Had they burned it to ashes? His wand had come to me, as had his mind stitched over the gaps in mine.

I struggled to clamber out of the bath. I could have called the house-elves, but I wanted to regain a measure of autonomy. I dried myself and dressed in the clean set of robes that the house-elves had left. Faint refrains on the English horn lulled me into a sense of safety as I walked to Tom's solarium.

He stopped playing when he saw me and hastened me to the small supper laid out for us. Lamb broth and bread. I took the glass of water first and drank it down. It was as manna from heaven. I felt tears rising again and hated myself for my lack of control.

"Water from Aguamenti does not taste the same, does it?" Tom asked quietly, watching me as if I might vanish into thin air, watching me as if I might shatter into pieces right before him.

"What would you know?" I asked angrily, refusing to look at him. They had only given me conjured water. The one time I had dared ask Potter for water, he had given me piss. Close enough to the source, he had assured me.

"I had a spy in their ranks," he replied grimly. I reared back, panicking. I hadn't- I hadn't expected anyone to find out. The lights were too bright, his eyes were too knowing, and the walls were closing around me.

"Hey, hey," he murmured, rising to his feet hastily and coming to kneel before me. I flinched when he touched my kneecaps. "With me, now, breathe!" He coaxed me gently, drawing soft circles on my knees. "Just so, my love. Two more breaths, with me."

Some of the Aurors had called me _my love_ when they had been drunk, when they had been high on conquest. I swallowed bile at the same words voiced by him and quietened my mind. It came easier, for reason had been restored to me. He had restored reason to me, from Dumbledore's own mind. It was a regrown limb that one had to learn to use again, unwieldy and clumsy, but I knew that with meditation and resolve I could harness it once more. I did not remember what it had been to be sane. Tom's fingers came to my cheeks, rubbing away my tears. He looked crestfallen as he knelt before me. Then he pulled himself together and said, "You haven't eaten." He dragged the bowl to him and spooned broth to my lips. I surrendered, as much as I desired to fight. Each time, I expected him to spit into the broth, or to upend it over me, or have me lap it as a dog, but he steadily fed me until the spoon clattered against the bottom of the bowl. Smiling brightly, he pressed a kiss to my cheek and withdrew.

"I have to see to some loose ends, love," he called out, throwing on his cloak.

I flinched at the prospect of being left alone, but manfully I swallowed down my fear and dragged Dumbledore's wand to me, clutching it tight though I distrusted it on gut instinct. I sensed Tom's wards on the door, and Bella's familiar magic, but I moved against the wall anyway, keeping an eye on the fireplace, the windows, and the door. Each gust of wind, each gurgle of water in the pipes, left me trembling and panicked. I was nearly hyperventilating when he returned to me.

"Here," he offered, falling to his knees a few paces away and crawling slowly to me, so as to indicate his movements to prevent surprising me. When he came close, he handed me a phial of Dreamless sleep, politely ignoring that he found me crouched by the wall with my wand ready to attack.

"I don't dream," I said dumbly, staring at the phial. It was one of the few achievements of my poor mind during those days of bleak suffering. I had often been a lucid dreamer, and having my mind tethered to Potter's had not helped, but during my captivity, I had never dreamed, except when I had been fed hallucinogens or subjected to systematic sensory stimulation or deprivation.

"Severus laced your food with Dreamless Sleep every day, my love," he said apologetically, sitting beside me, handing me the phial again. I took it this time. "There were days when the other drugs overpowered it, but he increased the dosage and hoped for the best."

"He was your spy," I stated, hating that I was crying again, hating that it had been the man who had given me unto them. I had begged him for death. He had condemned me to life, over and over again. He had saved my life over and over again, patching my mind and my body to the best of his abilities. He had seen everything that had been done to me, he had seen every crevice of my mind, he had seen every scar and brand on my body. Of course, he had been the spy. Betrayal was the creed of Severus's existence. When he had seen what he had given me unto, he had refused to kill me cleanly, obsessed with the idea of saving people as he was, and he had run to Tom to betray Dumbledore.

"What do you know?" I asked and I hated the pleading in my voice.

"I needed to know then," he said quietly. "I have you here now. I would prefer to remember, I confess, but I leave the decision to you. I shall be happy to permit you to Obliviate memories of your choosing."

Yes! Hope seared my heart. I raised my wand automatically, and he waited without flinching for my sentence. Then reason, returned to me, looked upon the man who had restored me to sanity. He had fought for me unceasingly, despite the odds, rising to command to ensure that I was saved, waging war against Dumbledore, and he had done it all despite knowing how broken I became each day in my disgrace. He had to have known that there was little hope in seeing me restored to life, to reason, to grace.

Perhaps the kindest act would be to Obliviate everything that was between us. Let him then look upon me with the same pity that Severus had. Let him not grieve me as a lover would.

And then what? I had been willing to die for him, many times over. I had been willing to debase myself under their command, to crawl and to fuck, all to buy him time. I was a selfish man at the end, even battered as I was. I wanted as much of him as he would allow, to what was left of me. I lowered my wand and closed my eyes. It was my lot to live in disgrace, among those who had once feared me. And for him, I would do that as well. Harry Potter had broken me twice, hadn't he?

Tom did not say anything, instead summoning his book of poems to us. It had been my book. I had stolen it from Abraxas's grave. I had given it to Abraxas to make amends between us when I had returned from my travels. I had read him poems while he wrote his Charms essays. We had kissed under English violets. And he had birthed Tom from his beating heart's blood. The pages were translucent under Tom's fingers as he turned them swiftly. How many times had he read the book during our parting?

  
_"I know that this was Life, the track_  
_Whereon with equal feet we fared ;_  
_And then, as now, the day prepared_  
_the daily burden for the back._

_But this it was that made me move_  
_As light as carrier-birds in air ;_  
_I loved the weight I had to bear,_  
_Because it needed help of Love:_

_Nor could I weary, heart or limb,_  
_When mighty Love would cleave in twain_  
_The lading of a single pain,_  
_And part it, giving half to him._ "

We stayed there, slumped against the wall, and he summoned a blanket to cover our lower halves when I shivered. He continued reading aloud, his body a warm line of heat against mine, though he made no move to touch me.

 _I hold it true, whate'er befall ;_  
_I feel it, when I sorrow most:_  
_'T is better to have loved and lost_  
_Than never to have loved at all._

When I wept, I wept deep, rattling sobs that reminded me of the crones in Albania who wept for their sons taken by the authorities for suspected terrorism. Tom gathered me to him, and he was weeping too, pressing soft kisses to my cheeks and forehead, as if it might undo all that had befallen us.

\-----


	3. Herakles

When I woke the next day, I saw that Tom had moved me to the chaise. I must have been exhausted, wrung dry of tears and adrenaline. He was humming absently as he puttered about at the grate, banking the fire. He was still in the previous day's robes, cloaked in soot and blood. He did not look as if he had managed a wink of sleep. Had he held me all night? Had he watched me all night? He had fought a war to get me back.

I wished I could see his face clearly. My vision was only good up close, and I doubted it could be repaired. While I had been able to supplant the ruined rods and cones of my eyes with magic in dire times of need, instinctively, I doubted that was sustainable.

"Happy New Year," he told me chirpily, when he heard me stirring.

"You saved me on my birthday," I noted, somehow pleased by that coincidence.

Harry Potter had branded me on the same day. I had my reason restored to me on the same day. Perhaps it was a rebirth; perhaps third time was the charm. There had been no love involved during the two previous times, after all.

"So I did," Tom said, pleased himself. He was handling an elegant wrought-iron poker. I shuddered at the memory, but decided to swallow the sensations awhile. He was here, he was my savior, and he was powerful.

He fiddled with the fireplace for a moment longer, before putting the poker away in its basket. Then he came to me and pressed a light kiss to my forehead, right over the rune they had carven into my skin.

"Go make yourself presentable," I ordered, delighting in the sparkle in his eyes that I could finally discern given that he was only a foot away.

"As you say, sir," he said merrily. "Shall I send for breakfast?"

"In the garden," I said bravely. "Where are we? I smell the sea."

I had only caught a glimpse of the flowers during our arrival. As much as I craved to be locked away into a corner cell without windows, away from pity and curiosity, I knew I had to forego my craving to be sheltered and forgotten if I were to recover. Reason, restored, was a wonderful thing. I felt brittle and a glance away from breaking, but I felt stronger too within myself.

"Montserrat," Tom said, walking to the windows and flinging open the heavy damask curtains. "This estate was part of Narcissa's dowry. She gifted it to me when I made it alive to twenty-one."

Made it alive to twenty-one. It was painful to hear him speak so flippantly of his own life.

Bright morning sunlight streamed in and caught the dust motes in the rooms, and lent a touch of color to Tom's pallor. I remembered him with his bronze skin, healthy of complexion, flushed with his flying and equestrian activities. That had been before he had entrenched himself in a war, in the bunkers and on the run, moving from camp to camp, living off grit and a spy's assurance. I wondered if I could ever bear to listen to his tales of adventure as he fought dragon and doom to save me.

"Go on," I shooed him. "I shall meet you outside."

He seemed relieved that I was of a mind to order him about. Understandable. After all, he was tired and ill-equipped to deal with the wreck I was. He had given me back reason. He had given me back freedom. I could manage to bridge the rest of it myself.

I forced myself up from the chaise once he had hurried away. I knew I ought to seek a healer, for many of the burns I had sustained in the warding flames were swollen and infected, and my vigorous scrubbing had not helped any. There was an odd ringing in my ears. Perhaps it had been there awhile and I had not noticed before. I was feverish too, and the world danced around me. I clawed my wrist for focus, and cast a few spells to strengthen myself. Dumbledore's wand was powerful, and I felt its old magic propping me up. I could manage breakfast, I swore.

When I stepped outside, deja-vu of the last time I had left his quarters caught me viscerally. Dumbledore's wand was heavy in my grip, but I carried on. There, at the end of the corridor, on a large patio that led to the gardens, stood Narcissa. Behind her were flowers in bloom, and bees dancing in the winds, and in the distance, the high blue of the open seas. She was wearing bright yellow, and though I could not see her clearly, my magic touched her sorrow.

"Narcissa," I greeted her, trying to keep my composure, trying to forget that she had seen me on my knees before the Order, trying to forget that she had seen the state of me the previous day when Tom had brought me as a barely lucid heap, trying to forget that she had been the one negotiating with the Ministry and the Order for my release.

"Welcome back!" She said, smiling easily, though there was sorrow in her eyes deep. I saw the black band on her wrist. I stared at it, and I did not know what to ask. I knew, abstractly, that there had been losses.

"Andromeda tortured Draco; repayment for the Longbottoms, she said," Narcissa said quietly.

I remembered the Longbottoms. Potter had strong memories of the time he had visited them in St. Mungo's. There was still a disjointedness to my mind where the bond with Harry Potter had been. In a way, we had been each other's irrevocably, and with his death, I was alone in my mind for the first time since 1981.

Andromeda Tonks. What was in a name? What was in a marriage? Blood called to destiny. And Andromeda was a Black still, just as Draco had been.

"She murdered him?"

"No, she left him at the gates of St. Mungo's, a blubbering mess," Narcissa's gaze was dark but resigned. "Tom did his best, in vain. They were close. We could have cared for him for the rest of his life, but I chose death over madness. My choice caused a rift in our marriage, but I cannot bring myself to regret it."

I searched my mind for a response, and finally settled on the truth, even if it exposed me further.

"When I was young, I read Herakles by Euripides," I said carefully, attempting to collect my thoughts into cogency. I had considered Euripides a dramatist. Surely, I had assumed, life was more mundane than that.

"Madness is its own prison," I continued carefully, thinking about the times I had clung to my bond with Potter, even as he cursed me, even as he fucked me, if only because I had wanted out of my ruined mind.

Here, by the Caribbean, safe under Tom's wards, I could see that our madness of two had perhaps saved me at the end, even if it had condemned me too. Dumbledore would have disposed of me long ago, as soon as I had been taken captive, if not for the horcrux, if not for Potter. _Tell me, how does it feel with my teeth in your heart?_ , I remembered Euripides asking, and Potter had marked me until he had run out of skin and flesh. And the horcrux in him had died to save me.

"And a madness of one is worse than death," I said clumsily, finding not the right words to express my thoughts.

Narcissa looked at me as if she understood. Perhaps she did. Women knew many matters men could not fathom. Motherhood changed them, I had heard. I remembered the red-haired woman. I remembered my mother dying in a gutter. Not all mothers were the same.

"I am heading back to London," she said then, changing the subject. "A healer is waiting, whenever you are ready." Then her expression mellowed and she asked quietly, "Would you make a portkey for me? Tom's portkeys make me queasy."

I dimly remembered her asking me the same, once or twice, when she had been heavy with child. Long ago, I had been rather known among my acquaintances for my skill in creating smooth port-key experiences. Druella had asked me for port-keys when she had been carrying her daughters.

I had taught Tom to make port-keys when he had been a boy of fifteen. I remembered chasing him through the Malfoy gardens, as he created successive port-keys in nanoseconds to run away. I had sent tickling spells and he had laughed whenever he was caught in the snare of one. His face had been young and unmarred by sorrow, and he had held only blind trust in his eyes as he beheld me. The innocence of it had shorn me afterwards, each time when they had cast on me consecutive tickling spells amidst the Cruciatus, to make sure they wrung out of me every debasement possible when one had a corporeal body. I remembered that Cornelius had been particularly fond of that sport. Sexual torture had not been his favorite. I shook that away, focusing on port-keys and Narcissa.

I knew Tom's work was exemplary. When it came to delicate spellwork, his results were better than mine. And yet, Narcissa was asking me. Perhaps I should have resented this ploy of hers to make me feel useful once again. I could not bring myself to resentment, overwhelmed as I was by difficult gratitude. She trusted me to send her across the world, even when I was a broken wreck.

She removed a brooch from her yellow cape and handed it to me. I closed my eyes and focused, and Dumbledore's wand eagerly responded.

"Thank you," she said politely, and I sensed a strange notion of goodwill in her magic. She had lost her marriage. She had lost her son. And yet it gave her serenity to make me feel useful still. Perhaps, out of all of them, she knew helplessness the most; she had been the Black virgin sacrifice, and she had been Lucius's trophy wife.

I wanted to thank her, but I did not know how. So I waited with her silently until the port-key took her away.

"There you are!"

Tom looked uncertain, no doubt wondering how to accost me. I took over, looping my hand through his arm, and leading him down the garden path to where the flower-bushes opened to the beach.

Sighing in gratitude, he confessed frankly, "The thought of bringing you sorrow, unintentionally, tortures me."

"You cannot take responsibility for my emotions," I said delicately, hating the subject, and yet minding it far less than I had thought I might; being truthful with Tom had never seemed a surrender.

The house-elves had laid out a picnic basket on the lawn. Simple fare - tea and toast, and marmalade. I remembered that I had liked orange marmalade once, the sweet-tartness of it. Now I associated the flavor with lemon drops. Sea-spray reached us on the westerlies. It stung the open blisters on my face and neck and hands, but I would rather be stung by the elements than by man's intention. Breakfast was quiet, though Tom's face was cast in pain when he saw me wait for the tea to grow lukewarm, so that it might not burn my throat or mouth. It irked me to see his discomfort and sorrow, but I trudged on regardless.

"I have a confession," Tom said quietly, and there was a tinge of fear to him.

"The horcruxes?" I asked patiently. I had suspected it for a while. There were moments when I had been close to death, when I had been pulled back by a miracle. A horcrux was no miracle, but very few knew any better. Most of the occasions had involved Potter's proximity and his presence had strengthened me when I had nearly died. Other times, though, when it had been just the Aurors or the Ministry or the Unspeakables, I had been pulled back from dying by a different death.

"There are none left," Tom replied miserably. "I had cast the strongest protection charms on them, but it seemed as if they tore themselves apart, one by one."

 _“Soon all of you immortals_  
_Will be as dead as we are!_  
_Come on then, what are you waiting for?_  
_Have you run out of thunderbolts?”_

"What are you saying?" Tom asked, wretched in his sadness, as he looked at me. "Are you very angry with me?"

"Euripides, my darling," I said, kissing him. I had wanted to call him _darling_ for a very long time. I had thought of it whenever lucidity graced me in that tower where I had known neither dignity nor safety. I had been ready to die, but I wished I had called him that endearment at least once. "We cheat death only as long as we are allowed to. Don't worry about the horcruxes. I am quite determined to live with you." 

And I was determined to die before him.

\-----

Agwe, the healer they had brought in, was a large Jamaican man who wore a colorful, printed robe. His smile was pearly and his manner assured. I was relieved when he set about greeting me without any attempt at communicating pity or sympathy. Tom had left me to it, though I had had to tell him off quite sharply before he would leave me alone. I sensed the clinginess in his magic as he walked away. He did not believe yet that I was in his keeping.

"War?" He asked me, as I stripped before him. He was already mixing potions and ointments on the sturdy table he had brought along, briskly concocting pastes of varying strengths for the blisters and the burns.

"Yes, it was a war," I said, wincing when his large hands came to poke and prod at the burns.

He worked silently and efficiently. Even when he needed me to shift and turn to give him better access to various wounds, he was curt and focused on his work.

"They must have had an exceptional healer," he murmured, inspecting the scar that ran down from my navel, from the first time Potter had cast Sectumsempra on me.

"Yes, he was a potioneer," I said, thinking of Severus.

It raised emotional turmoil when I remembered his hands, brisk in the beginning and painfully gentle in the end. He had wanted me to break when I had been able, and he had wanted to patch me together when I had broken.

"You will have to be on a regimen of potions for the rest of your life," he said, cleaning his hands and jotting down notes on a long scroll. "The first concern we need to address is your magic."

I suppressed an angry retort, waiting for his verdict. I suspected what he was about to say.

"There has been a tearing in it," he said cautiously, as if striving to phrase the diagnosis correctly. I did not blame him. "It is an ailment of the soul." Harry Potter had died and my last horcrux had sacrificed itself. When he had died, I wondered if the magic I had given him had returned to me.

"Instinctive wandless reactionary magic, of the sort you have been practicing recently, can often lead to such tears in a wizard's magic." That was true. I doubted that my madness and the osmosis between the Castle's magic and mine had helped any.

"You can consider it a highly charged, leaky field," he explained.

Like excessive diffusion of charge carriers in the emitter-base junction of a bipolar transistor leading to its permanent breakdown. Dumbledore must have known what it would do to me. _Merely your death would not satisfy me_ , he had said. I shoved that thought away.

"The other major concerns are your hearing and vision," he stated, looking over his notes. "I need to look over my notes further to recommend a course of treatment for your vision. My professional opinion is that we conduct surgery on your ear canal, since the damage is affecting your balance and gait, even if you seem to be functional with the natural assistance of your magic. Internally, your heart susurrations are worrying and your diaphragm is weak. You will need to mind dietary restrictions for the rest of your life, since there is extensive damage to your gastrointestinal organs. There are several older injuries to your respiratory system, though those seem fairly benign. We shall monitor them. Mentally, you seem to be recovering rapidly. I do recommend being cautious around new stimuli or environments, since it takes time to understand what triggers instinctive or reactive responses born of trauma."

"Can I engage in sexual congress?" I asked Agwe.

I did not know whether Tom had been attracted to me before. I had little reason to think he would be, with the state I was in. Nevertheless, if there remained a speck of interest, I wanted him to indulge. What would it be like, to be touched and taken by someone who sought mere pleasure instead of more complicated enactments of justice and vengeance?

"If you wait a week for the rectal and perianal wounds to close, I see no physical reason not to," Agwe replied cautiously, looking at me as if he doubted my judgment. "However-"

"I will mind my emotional state," I cut in hastily.

He looked dubious. Then he said pleasantly, "I hope you shall not hesitate to send for me if you need any assistance. Please let me know when you are prepared to proceed with the ear canal surgery."

\----

I spent the day ambling along the coast. It was difficult. I whipped around frantic whenever I heard a gull landing on the water, whenever I heard a voice on the winds, whenever I heard a bough cracking. I remembered Agwe's advice to pace myself when it came to new stimuli. I could get used to the skies and the sea, the open stretch of sand and the emptiness, couldn't I? I expected it to be an arduous recovery when it came to dealing with people. I had managed to keep it together so far, with Tom and Narcissa, but they had held my welfare foremost in our interactions. They had treated me with kid gloves. Groups would be the real trial by fire. I associated groups with violence.

A crack of Apparation startled me out of my thoughts and I clutched my heart reactively. It had reminded me of one of Harry Potter's favorite curses to jar me to the present whenever I had fled into the corners of my broken mind. After the Sectumsempra had broken my timpanum, even following Severus's best attempts at healing the membrane, I had become highly sensitized to sounds, reacting badly to unexpected auditory stimuli.

It was Tom. He was carrying raincoats. He was doing his best to ignore my startled and panicked reaction to his appearance.

"It will rain soon!" he explained, hurrying to me. Sure enough, while I had been wandering, rain clouds had gathered over the beach, fat and heavy. I had forgotten the changeable weather in this part of the world.

"Here," he said, holding up a raincoat for me. It was bright green. I thought of Harry Potter once again. Then I shook myself free of that memory and let Tom help me into the coat.

"May I?" I asked him politely, taking his and holding it up for him. His happiness at the trivial gesture overwhelmed me. Unable to speak my gratitude or my affection, I pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck.

It began raining then. Pouring, truly. He conjured one of those warm, white balls of light that I had hallucinated many a time in the depths of my torment. It hung over us, lighting our path.

"We can Apparate back," he offered.

I took his hand in mine. He leaned into me, instinctively, before leaning away, mindful to not crowd me. Oh, this creature; it must be Abraxas's heart. My soul was inhuman. Then again, I thought carefully, what of the horcrux that had sacrificed itself upon the wards? What of the others that had broken when I had nearly died, each falling to let me live? What of my own surrender before those doors in Malfoy Manor, letting Tom escape? What of my willing subjection to Potter and his merry band, to Dumbledore and to Severus, all for the sake of buying Tom time and safety? Perhaps humanity, even if of a stunted sort, was not alien to me.

There was a strike of lightning then, and it seared my eyes, and it was following by a loud peal of thunder. I closed my eyes and clung to him. He let me cling.

"Should we go back?" He asked me anxiously, running his hand in a soothing manner over the knobs of my spine.

"No," I replied, digging my nails into my wrists, lifting my head from his shoulder to force myself to watch the lightning again, to hear the thunder again and again until I stopped flinching.

In the Caribbean, even the rain was warm. I wondered if I would ever be able to live again through a Scottish winter. The cold had settled into the marrow of my bones.

Once the rain was retreating, once the sun was already marching back to take the sky, I turned fully into his embrace and kissed him. He stilled a long moment, before opening to me. He tasted of tea and biscuits, and his arms came about me to hold me lightly to his chest, the darling thing that he was. We had not kissed before like this, I realized.

"Nebuchadnezzar had his reason returned to him," I whispered, staring at the man who held me, at his stark pale features that held a hue of red from the returning sun behind, at the trust in his eyes as he smiled bright at my words. When he laughed, I suppressed the urge to cry and lifted us off the ground. He clung to me and I cherished the instinctive clasp of his arms around me, that he trusted me to protect him still.

"You can fly," he said disbelievingly, staring at the receding sands, as we spun through the last of the rain and the warm Caribbean winds, as I carried him swiftly inland across the gardens to the patio in the eastern wing where his solarium was.

"No thanks to you," I told him, settling us gently to the ground. He wavered a jot, reorienting himself with gravity, and he held me in his trusting hands.

My magic was nothing like what it had been once. And yet, armed with this reason made of the ruins of Dumbledore and me, knitted together by Tom's magic, I had enough control to fly once again.

Later, once we had supped, Tom played Dvorak for me on his Horn. As the caprice crescendoed through the strains of his music, so did it in my blood. I had not had the luxury of spontaneity before, not since I had been born of the cauldron. Was that true? Perhaps madness was merely unbroken spontaneity. I did not know.

I sighed, folding my legs into a lotus, closing my eyes and meditating, finding it easier to ground myself than I had in many years, and I saw my mind. It was a craft of beauty, as the boy had worked each dendrite and receptor carefully to match the exact way I thought and perceived the world, without attempting to subvert. He had held me utterly at his mercy, and he had crafted no slave to his will as I might have been tempted to had our places been reversed.

Content in a way I had not known before, my repaired mind stretched out lazily and touched another that I knew well.

"You are smiling," he noted, putting down his instrument and looking at me curiously.

There was a haunted cast to his features. I remembered him staring at Dumbledore's dying form in horror. I tugged him to the chaise where I sat and once he sat primly at the edge beside me, I knelt before him. His hands came to my shoulders of their own accord, gentle and without a touch of greed. Oh, how unlike me he was!

"Cast Legilimency on me," I asked. He hesitated, no doubt still afraid for me. I waited patiently. My mind was focused and clear, and I relished that it was.

"If you insist," he said, and cast upon me.

"Oh!" He exclaimed softly, seeing the extent of what he had done. "I healed you; no, there are scars still," he said sadly. There would be, always. And it did not matter.

"Reason has been returned to me," I reminded him, drawing him in further, showing the newly tempered structures of logic and regulation.

"How can I condemn myself when I see that you are happy with my shoddy work?" He murmured, and the gladness in his voice suffused my mind in white heat.

"You love me," he continued solemnly, with reverence, as if reciting a prayer to the holiest of holies. He was cradled in my mind, and I was trying to show him how grateful and safe I was in his keeping.

Was that love, then? If he claimed it so, it must be. He was holding my mind open, after all.

He cut off the spell and put his wand away. There was a tinge of red to his cheeks as he avoided my gaze.

"I fell in love with you quite a while ago," he confessed reluctantly, as if those words gave me power. How silly of him to be blind to the truth of his power over me. Hadn't he seen the consequences? _Love_ was the least of it.

"You have been everything from the moment I beheld you, even if I had not possessed the mind to recognize that," I reminded him, rising to my feet, and then surprising laughter out of him when I pushed to splay him on the chaise. His desire lashed through his magic even when he held himself restrained. Oh, how had I not seen the want in his eyes, in the twist of his mouth, in the careful way he flattened his fingers against my skin? He had wanted me. Perhaps, I admitted to myself with chagrin and confusion, he wanted me still. I followed him, covering his limbs with mine, and placing a soft kiss to his nose that bore exactly four freckles. There was curiosity and trepidation intermixed in his gaze as he relaxed his limbs, as he let me move him as I saw fit, no doubt being unreasonably careful in his determination not to hurt me. I switched our positions, rolling us about, so that I was beneath him. I needed to know if he was attracted to me physically still.

"May I?" I asked him, diving for a kiss. That broke his restraint. Taking my face in his hands, he drunk of me like a man dying of thirst, desperate and whining into my mouth. I gripped his hips to steady him so that he would not hurt himself against my sharp bones, and he sighed into my mouth.

When I woke the next day, he was lying atop me still but attempting to sneakily turn away to hide his morning erection.

"One day, you will be old enough to be grateful for that," I teased him, and his cheeks reddened and he refused to look at me.

I had never favored masturbation myself considering it an unnecessary expense of time and energy, particularly when I could do without, but I liked the thought of him doing so. Really, before my extended captivity, sexuality had not been foremost on my mind. I wondered how it had been before. From the letters I had read that bore the scent of violets still, it seemed as if my interactions with Abraxas had been more romantic than erotic. It made sense. I had never been particularly comfortable in my skin, when I had resembled my father. Later, when in this body, I had been barely keeping lucidity and in hardly a state of mind to pursue carnality. Tom had been a boy still when we had kissed first, and I had wondered if he had been attracted to me physically, but had not dwelt upon the matter then. It was only later, when held open and fucked by all manners of strangers and acquaintances, of different species and magical bents, that I had let myself wonder how it might have been if Tom had taken a carnal interest. There, as I lay beneath him, with his erection pressed into my thigh, I found in myself stirrings of genuine curiosity and interest once more.

"Touch yourself?" I asked him quietly. His breathing stuttered, betraying his desire.

"No," he said, still refusing to meet my gaze in his shyness. Oh, darling, whatever are you ashamed of? I was a man whose desecration only death would wash off. And he was my warrior, my savior, my reason to continue living, and he was bashful before me. He must have seen my amusement at the irony, because he scowled and demanded, "Touch me."

I gladly obliged. I was concerned that I might accidentally harm him, but I trusted him to stop me if that became the case. I did not think I had touched anyone's cock before, even if all those memories were blurred. There had been a great many cocks, but most of them had been in my mouth or arse. It was new then, to touch. I started at his neck, gliding my fingers down the length of his nape, and he closed his eyes. I moved my right hand to his spine, holding him tight against me, and I laughed in delight when he jerked his cock against my pelvis compelled by primal instincts.

"Just like that," I praised him. "Now may I remove your clothes so that I can tend to you?"

"As you please," he murmured, wriggling atop me, keening for my touch.

Once I had divested him of attire and pushed the robes away, I saw him nude and erect for the first time. Oh, I had not feared that I might remember the others, however even if I had, my fears would have left me upon seeing the feast that he was, crafted of raw sensuality and physical perfection, his body hewn of war and purpose.

"Is it uncomfortable?" He fretted, as I touched his cock.

"You have seen my memories," I told him carefully, trying to articulate the differences for his sake and mine. "Wanting is novel to me, and has only been in response to you."

I saw that he did not surrender to sensation even so, no doubt concerned for me. I doubled my care and attentions, so that I might draw his desire out, so that I might bask myself in the wonder that was his want for my touch, so that I might take a quiet pride in being able to bring him to climax despite all that stood between us in the horrors of yesterday. And when he came, I brought my hand to his lips and watched him lick his seed away daintily. I found the gesture quaint and endearing. I could not resist kissing him once again.

\-----

We lapsed into an even keeled domesticity gradually. He did have to leave me alone on some days, to retreat and bar himself in the large dining room where the Floo was. I wondered if he was keeping me away because of the tidings or because he fretted that I might take badly to his authority over men and women who had once served me. He need not have fretted. Wild horses could not have dragged me to Britain right then. I was content in this solitude of two.

I had undergone the aural surgery Agwe had recommended. It had been difficult to voluntarily drink a numbing potion and an anesthetic again, even if the auspices were different. Nevertheless, I trusted Tom viscerally and when I woke, he was sitting beside me pale, his face cupped in his hands. It was the first time he kissed me deep and desperate of his own volition.

Agwe had cornered him afterwards, no doubt to tell him off for pressing his attentions on a traumatized survivor of wartime atrocities. Tom returned guilty and apologetic. Agwe, for reasons that eluded me, was more concerned with my emotional state than I was.

"I quite enjoy his attentions," I chided Agwe the next time we were alone, as he peered into my ear. "Will you stop meddling?"

I was more comfortable with him than I had been with Severus. It was logical, given that my medical interactions with Severus had been involuntary and embarrassing. I looked forward to his visits, because I had begun associating him with convalescence. Severus had healed me to keep me alive, to restore me sufficiently for another round of sport at their hands. Agwe was no healer of the mind, but he had wound up in that role accidentally, due to the necessarily intimate details of my recovery and the many wounds that had been inflicted through sexual sport.

"Tom is a good man," Agwe said absently, moving away to jot down notes. "I am concerned that you are pushing yourself past your limits."

He must have a compendium of notes on my status over the past few months. I wondered how many patients he had. Was he one of those healers who went about conducting house-calls? I would have let my magic taste his truths, but he tended to fret a great deal when I attempted wandless magic before him. Rightfully, he called it a dangerous strain on the convalescing connection between my magic and my body. The Caribbean estate where we were had been sanitized to his high standards, to contain stray magic, so as not to impede my recovery. I followed his instructions most of the time, forcing myself to become familiar with Dumbledore's wand, to establish a connection by only channeling magic through it. Instinctively, I knew the wand took to me. Nevertheless, I had a gut dislike for it, remembering all that I had faced when Dumbledore had been the master of it.

"Have you had any visitors?" Agwe asked me.

Oh, he could be quite a menace. He had been on my case for the past few weeks, demanding that I must test my social limits before I embarked on a sexual misadventure with Tom. He feared that I was repressing my memories and that it would prove dangerous in the long run.

"I have considered making a trip to London," I said quietly. I had little desire to, but Tom meant to return to visit Narcissa and Lucius for the Summer Solstice and I did not intend to be parted from him. His presence was an emotional crutch I had decided to keep for the rest of my life.

"Maybe you can visit the wand-maker's?" Agwe said cheerfully, patting a large hand on my spindly shoulder.

Oh, he would like that. He was always striving to get me to visit the nearby town with him. He placed a great value on the therapeutic effects of shopping.

"Are you still getting Tom off with your hand?" Agwe asked, returning to his notes.

"Yes," I admitted. Tom would not permit anything else, obsessively concerned as he was with my emotional well-being. I had once brought it up that I had more practice in sucking and fucking than in giving hand-jobs. It had hurt to see him crestfallen; he had run away that night.

We had slowly meandered to sleeping together, even if I was dependent on Dreamless sleep to make it work. I had frightened him with my mutterings on the nights that I had forgotten it. He had fretted about the addictive nature of it, but Agwe called it the lesser evil. Agwe believed in chronic pain remediation, even when it meant fostering a dependency on chemicals. And we knew that chronic pain was going to be my companion for the rest of my life. My joints creaked, my vision spun, my balance was at times clumsy, my heart was a beaten down instrument, my kidneys were close to failure, and the rest of me was barely put together through will and care and love. There were good days and there were days of pain. During the latter sort, Agwe and I would spend days on the seashore sharing a joint. Tom would not let us smoke in the house. He complained that the smell gave him a headache, the darling thing. I suspected that only Bob Marley had imbibed more marijuana on these sands than I had so far.

Agwe's hands came to turn me about on his rickety examination table. I went with his directions without fuss. Captivity had in many ways made me docile, I knew, and it showed in my interactions with Agwe. I had to force myself to preserve privacy when it came to questioning. At least with Tom, our mutual sexual interest and my mindfulness of our age difference helped me find the wherewithal to cling to my physical privacy.

"You should consider letting him disrobe you," Agwe offered, non-judgmental and kind as he was on the subject every time he had brought it up.

He thought that it might make me feel secure. It was not shyness or embarrassment, despite what Agwe feared. It was practicality. I doubted that Tom would retain his sexual interest if he saw my body. And his sexual interest had spurred me on my path to recovery. I doubted I would have contemplated a return to London if not for the fact that I knew at least one man beheld me with an emotion that was not disgust or pity. Seeing my body would not aid that. Even despite Agwe's excellent work, the brands and the marks Potter had left remained on my hide, ugly and final. Perhaps it was due to the magic that had bound us in life. The marks left by the others had disappeared. I was not surprised. Harry Potter had been my fate, just as I had been his.

"After London," I told Agwe. He did not press further. He knew well how determined I was.

London had been a difficult subject. When Tom had brought it up, I had wondered why he wished to return. Had he tired of me? Did he wish to become Minister or become embroiled in their politics there? Was there an uprising? I had avoided the newspapers and Tom had not overwhelmed me with tidings from across the sea.

It was the closest we had come to an argument.

"It is Draco's death anniversary," he had said quietly, later in the night, as he slunk into our bed where I had been lying restless. "Narcissa is alone. So is Lucius. It would help if I was there."

"You must go then," I replied, not knowing what else to say.

"I tried to heal him," he confessed, waving his wand to put out the candles. I slept better in pitch dark. He had slowly accustomed himself to it. He had made many changes to his life to make it easier for me. Overwhelmed, I shifted closer.

"They took him on the third of March," he whispered in the darkness, running his fingers over my back as he held me to his chest. We tended to sleep apart, even if I wound up with my good ear pressed to his chest, finding his heartbeat relaxing. In the darkness, confessional, I was glad that he had taken the initiative to pull us into that arrangement I favored.

"He had been returning from Azkaban, where we had established our base. He was our liaison with Severus. Somehow, Severus had managed to get a message through to him, after...after they took you. We were initially wary, but we were desperate too. I believe that the Ministry suspected a spy, because the battles had been going in our favor. So they sent Andromeda on the hunt. She was as Bellatrix, particularly vicious after her daughter was captured. Narcissa offered her in return for you, you know? And Andromeda spat in her face. So she found Draco and his small group at the borders of Carmathenshire, and there was a brutal battle, and she took him alive. We had resigned ourselves to his death, because the tracker werewolves said he had sustained fatal wounds. And then, many weeks later, we took the Ministry, and found him at the gates of St. Mungo's, raving and demented. Lucius and I rushed to him. Narcissa watched. And despite all that we did, he did not recover. Lucius wanted to wait. He wanted to take him to the Americas. The best healers were brought in and professed failure. Narcissa killed him on his birthday, and she was never quite the same. I don't think Lucius forgave her."

Tom was crying, I realized, though he had pressed his wrist into his eyes to hide it. I lifted my head to kiss him softly. He had been close to Draco. Even if I did not understand fraternal affection, I had seen that in their friendship. They had been raised together as brothers. They had fought together. And only one of them had made it out alive. I thought of Narcissa once again, standing before the sea in the gardens in her bright yellow dress, asking me to make a port-key for her, tired and proud, capable of kindness still. I thought of Lucius, all those years ago, when he had told me of Tom's existence, standing between my insanity and Tom's safety, as Lily Potter once had.

"I think he would have been proud of you," I said, knowing that it was inadequate comfort.

"He used to tell me the same," Tom said disconsolately, crying in my arms. "Some nights, he would return from his rendezvous with Severus, and he would watch me jump into those memories and come back stricken at what they were doing to you, and I would hate myself for not having saved you yet, for having fled with Narcissa condemning you to their hands, and Draco would tell me that you would be proud of me, for having united the factions, for waging war on Dumbledore and the Ministry both, for not collapsing in my grief and surrendering in a last ditch attempt to save you."

"I am proud of you," I said sincerely. "You united them where I could not. You led them where I could not. As I have said before, you are nothing like me, and I am glad for that. I know that you are concerned how I may react, on some days, knowing the you won my war, knowing that you made a better leader than I ever did. I am _proud_ of you, Tom. Dumbledore and I were great magicians in our primes. However, neither of us had what it takes to unite a country, to win a war that was fought on multiple fronts, to delegate authority, to lead an army to victory. Our successes were rooted in our individual prowess. Your success is rooted in your ability to command, to lead. Even in my madness, even in the darkest days of my captivity, I did not stop being proud of you, of the fact that you did not relinquish hope, that you fought on despite the odds. I wanted you to win, for your sake, and I was willing to take upon myself whatever I could to ensure that. I think Draco was too. He knew you. He believed in you. Please don't blame yourself. It was war. He made his choices and I made mine. And in the end, we can mourn and rebuild, only because you pulled us through."

Every word was true, I realized. Dumbledore and I had been terrible at leadership in times of war, believing ourself infallible. Harry Potter, as much as I loathed to think of him, would have made a better leader than Dumbledore. He had unified the Aurors under him. He had been more pragmatic about courting the Ministry than Dumbledore had been. And I would not have won the war Tom had.

"Come with me?" Tom asked, in a small voice. "I am loathe to be parted from you."

How foolish I had been to think that separation anxiety plagued only me. He looked at me often as if I might vanish away, softly and suddenly, like the hunter who had met a Snark that turned out to be a Boojum. When I touched him to bring him to release, he clasped my arms as if to have me melt into him, cell by cell, mind unto mind, so that none could take me away from him again.

"I know it is unfair to ask you to return to Britain," he continued, desperately, sadly, full of guilt. "I just- I just cannot leave without you."

"Ask and you shall have it of me," I said quietly, smiling tenderly at those memories under the full moon, when I had been all powerful and mad, and he had been but a boy trapped in a large manor as a dirty secret. He had leapt to hug me then, startling me quite. Even then, I had held him close.

If Harry Potter had been my fate, Tom was my destiny, my fate overrun, my will to live. Schopenhauer's book, _The World as Will and Representation_ , had been one of my favorites as a teenager. I had liked his distinction between destiny and fate.

"I admire you," Tom said then, kissing me sweetly. "I will be never as half as brave. I cannot understand how you do it, and everyday I am grateful that you do so. I love you too, beyond word and sense."

Bravery? Perhaps it was bravery. I did not know the distinction between bravery and perseverance. He made it possible. With the return of reason, my will had blended quite naturally with purpose and pragmatism. My life revolved around him and I meant to continue that state of affairs, entangling us to the best of my ability. Nobody had fought for me before. They had fought for my cause. He was the first to wage war for me, and when he had found me, he had brought me to the other end of the world to see me recovered, instead of putting me down like a diseased dog, as anyone with an iota of sense might have done.

\----

"Make the port-key, will you?" I asked Tom, as I rifled through the wardrobe to find a set of woolen robes. I expected to be bloody cold in that forsaken land. Malfoy Manor, I remembered, was notoriously cold, as if the stones refused to bend to Narcissa's will to make the manor a home.

"You are better at it," he replied, still on the chaise, glum of face, as he battled his many uncertainties exercised on my behalf. He fretted so over my ability to cope.

"Fifteen minutes," I called out, selecting the warmest set of robes and a full-length cloak. "If you aren't ready in fifteen minutes, I shall be cross."

He laughed and tugged himself out of his gloom.

I suppressed memories of how Harry Potter had doused me in cold water, and then stuffed me with nettles, during the times I had delayed responding to his demands when he came to me in the middle of the night. And yet, even amidst the torment, my magic had clung to his, and his scar had bled in sympathy, and my horcrux had stood betwixt us beginning where we ended. My mind had been latched onto his, seeking him as the sole beacon in that place of too much magic, seeking succour from Dumbledore's Legilimency, seeking grounding when unmoored by torment. His wand had worked for me just as well as mine once had. When he handed me out to the Aurors or the Unspeakables, and came to collect me after a long night where I barely remembered my own name, I remembered clinging to him desperately, and I remembered that he had held me close equally desperate, and we had our glimpses of reprieve, before he would throw me down and begin all over again. Each time he found himself touching me with want, he hated me all the more, and exceeded his own cruelty to have me unmade.

Perhaps he had begun in grief. However, over time, we had bled into each other, and he had broken himself in breaking me, and he had broken me in ways I could not still bring myself to acknowledge. Shame suffused me at the thought of begging him to fuck me, to ruin me, to torture me, for better him than anyone else, because his magic was the only solace I had known in that place. It had been easier when I had little lucidity. I could easily avoid dwelling on memories and avoid seeing the dark and dismal truths contained within.

"Voldemort?" Tom asked, dressed in swathes of stylishly cut black, carrying a long umbrella, looking quintessentially British.

"I am ready," I told him. I extended the port-key I had made to him. He smiled at me, relaxed and content, and we left together.

\-----

We ended up in Narcissa's grand dining chamber. There was a meeting in full swing, and heads turned as one as Tom steadied me discreetly. Apparating sent me dizzy, no doubt due to the aural damage that I was slowly recovering from. I should have expected port-keys to do the same. I was ashamed that I had not thought of it, that I had not thought to configure the port-key to the entrance hall, that I had forgotten to draw up my cloak over my head, for now there was no place to hide.

"My lord," Bella greeted me, rising, from where she sat at the head of the table. There were new scars on her face, and age and many griefs stamped on her brow. I nodded to her and ran my eyes over the rest of them. There was pity and knowing, and a great deal of shared embarrassment as they beheld me.

Tom cleared his throat. Narcissa, sitting beside Bella, ice to her sister's fire, rose too, and walked to us.

"May I take your cloaks?" She offered, smiling warmly at us, reaching to kiss Tom's cheek, and then curtseying to me in welcome. I felt awkward and out of place, and wanted nothing more than to head right back to the Caribbean, but I swallowed and moved past her, walking to the table where silence reigned. There was Lucius, his face creased by grief. There was Fenrir, looking at me in open wonder. There were many others whom I had trained to fight and survive, and all of them had seen me crawling and crying and begging.

"It is good to have you back," Fenrir blurted finally, when it became clear that nobody else would. "Have you recovered?"

"Mostly," I admitted truthfully. There was little to be gained in reserve and discretion at this late juncture. The sooner I got over my embarrassment, the sooner they would get over theirs. "Tom took excellent care of me." Then I took a deep inhale, dug my nails into my wrist to ground myself, and said quietly, "I would not be here if you had not saved me. I am quite glad to be alive, despite the horrors that befell me." They looked frozen at my unexpected and unprecedented candor. "We did not mean to interrupt," I added, glancing at the maps strewn across the table. Tom had escorted Narcissa back to her seat and stood behind her, his hands loosely placed on her shoulders. This was no place for me. And I did not wish it to be. I had had my share of war and strategy to last me for the rest of my life. "I shall be in the study, should you need me."

I managed to retreat with my head held high.

"My lord!"

It was Lucius. I turned to face him.

"Welcome back," he said respectfully. The others rose with him and murmured the same. They meant it. Tom stood there, smiling, seeing past my blank face to my surprise.

I was taken back to that graveyard. There had been only fear in the circle. There had been no respect or loyalty. It had been a long road to claw back a degree of devotion. And then I had sacrificed myself for the boy, and they had fought for me, to see me saved.

"Thank you," I said, disliking that my voice was not even. "I am very sorry for your loss, Lucius."

His face was shadowed by sorrow, but he nodded, and said, "He died for a cause he believed in, my lord. Just as every other man and woman who died in this long war."

So it was as I had expected. After Tom had taken me to the island, the war had continued, and while the Death Eaters under Narcissa held the Ministry and most of the cities, there was still guerrilla activity, there were still Robin Hoods fighting for the martyred Harry Potter and Dumbledore.

"We must end the war then," I said, hoping that they would not notice that I was leaning against the doors to support myself, lightheaded from the port-key and from the unexpected interaction. "We must end the war and rebuild, to honor their sacrifices. All of you fought for a better world. Now you are close to victory. What remains?"

"Hogwarts," Fenrir said, even as Bella glared at him. Tom was glaring too, I noticed. "The Castle is against us. Most of the resistance is sheltered there, and Kingsley Shacklebolt has managed to escape, and he has consolidated his forces there."

I looked at them, weary of war. How many of them had been widowed? How many of them had lost children and brothers and sisters and parents? They had fought for me, even when I had given up. They had fought under Tom, even though he had been barely grown to manhood then. And we had abandoned them, fleeing south. It had been necessary, I knew. I would not have survived my rescue otherwise, broken in health and will as I had been, craving death.

"I will bring you the Castle," I said quietly. The Castle's magic had intervened, in as much as it could under the will of the then Headmaster.

"My lord!" Bella exclaimed, quite shaken. "We cannot possibly ask you to return there."

"The Castle knows me," I said flatly. "I am the last of the line of the Founders. If you want the Castle, you need me."

"We need you," Fenrir said uncomfortably. He had grown into oratory, finally setting aside his impulsiveness to craft arguments and persuade. Tom's influence was telling. "We are not going to risk you again, for that stupid castle."

"Tom?" I asked, keeping my voice level, so that he would know he held the veto.

This was his war. If he wanted me to end it, I would. I did not come to usurp him, to make decisions on anyone's behalf. I had only come because I did not see how I could be parted from him.

"I trust you," he said finally, and he meant it, though fear was barely restrained in his expression, though his voice was full of misgiving. "If you say you can bring the castle, I trust you. I must remain behind, to mitigate risk. Please choose a group and proceed as you see best."

I could not suppress a pang of wonder at his trust. He stood there, determined and alone, and I saw what it meant to be a true leader of men.

"As you will it," I said quietly.

They acknowledged me as their lord still, but I knew I was the last remnant of that feudal world that Grindelwald, Dumbledore, Harry and I had brought to being. It had had brilliant, powerful men at its helm, and men such as Cornelius attempting to usurp power and prestige. Tom had upturned that order. Perhaps this would mark the dawn of true democracy in the wizarding world. I had not thought as to what he might do once the war was won. I knew that I had no place here, and I desired none. I was content to finish the war for them, since I was the last survivor of that old world who could put an end to the chaos we had sown ourselves.

\----

"Are you sure?" Bella asked, her usual lack of empathy overcome by her concern for my well-being. She had always loved me in her own way, even when I had been utterly unlovable. Perhaps madness called to madness.

We were standing on a grassy knoll before the Castle. I could see the tree-tops of the Forest from here. I had many visceral memories of those trees, of giants and werewolves, of centaurs chanting to Mars over my despoiled body, their harsh voices leaving my sobs unheard, as the Aurors held me down, as Harry Potter branded me with magic irrevocable. There were memories in the land, in the air, in the wards and they reached out to me as I walked closer. Here, my blood had been shed. Here too. And here. I clutched Dumbledore's wand tighter. At least, I was not alone. Bella had the Castle surrounded. She was with me, sticking close, her eyes sharp on me, her fingers fiddling with the port-key that she held which could take me back to Tom should I be in danger, should I fall prey to old fears. I wondered if Tom had warned her about my panic attacks. Perhaps she had seen me that day, many months ago, when Dumbledore had to cast a breathing charm upon me when I had begun hyperventilating.

"Are you sure?" She asked again, as the gates came into view.

I cut a slash across my hand, reminded of how Dumbledore had done the same to open the warded doors that had guarded Tom. Bella looked queasy. She had always reacted strongly to seeing me bleed, even in the early days of our movement. She liked me infallible. I wondered how she had coped during the last few years.

When I pressed my bleeding hand to the gates, the metal rattled against the wards that had been set by the inhabitants of the Castle, against Dumbledore's protections prevailing still. Then the metal began melting. I clung to the bars still, waiting for my blood to eat away at the wards and protections of the gates.

"My lord!" Bella said, alarmed, as she watched my flesh burn.

I shook my head, digging the nails of my other hand to my wrist to focus. This was barely pain, given my admittedly high tolerance. The gates creaked and twisted inward, careening open as if blown away by a powerful gale. Bella clutched me, keeping me upright, and she frowned at my hand, aggrieved.

"I cannot heal anything!" She lamented, tugging her hair in frustration.

I suppressed a smile at her typical self-flagellations on my behalf. Dumbledore's wand was not a healing wand, but this close to the Castle, my convalescing magic took a mind of its own, as the osmosis between the Castle's magic and my own began, and I saw the blisters slowly closing.

"You have always excelled at healing," she said, admiring and envious.

There were not many healers that she knew, given that she mostly ran around with sorcerers who lived for Dark Magic. She had always wondered as to my admittedly remarkable ability to heal. She was not the only one. Agwe had been impressed too, even if he chided me endlessly when I fell into reactive, wandless magic, saying that I was setting back my recovery. Dumbledore had called my ability remarkable, even if he had taken great care in the breaking of it.

"Ready for a battle, Bella?" I asked her, opening my healed palm and offering it to her.

She took it gladly, and her grip was sure and strong, and she led me onto the grounds, laughing wildly, berserk and beautiful in a way nobody else could be.

"I am sorry that I waited for four months before I managed to retrieve you from Azkaban," I told her, as we crossed the Whomping Willow. I had had plenty of time to dwell upon that. I did not think I could have managed to retrieve them earlier, given how fragile in mind I had been.

She turned to face me, earnest and free of her usual madness, and she told me quite solemnly, "I did not doubt that you would free us. And that night, when you broke us out of Azkaban, I remember how you were shaking from withdrawal, battered by whatever potions you had dosed yourself with. I remember how you could hardly keep two thoughts together, how your hand shook when you held the Dementors off with your magic and will. When we returned to the Manor, I saw you staggering away, and I had followed you in concern, and I saw Tom attending to you. You saved us endangering your health, what little of it you had left to you. You reminded me then, though I had never forgotten, of why I chose to follow you when I had been all of fifteen."

I had not much in the way of paternal instincts; no familial instincts now that I considered the matter. I had a soft corner for Bella though, just as I had liked Severus and Barty when they had come to my fold as children. Perhaps the closest to family I had had in my life before was Harry Potter. We had been each other's by fate, blood and magic, by soul and wand.

Then there came Tom. He was of my soul and Abraxas's blood. He was his own man, and he chose me. And now I had given myself into his keeping. I walked towards the Castle, up the winding path, feeling curses aimed from the high turrets and watch-towers, and feared nothing.

The entrance doors fell open. I let Bella and her group storm the castle, and I heard the sounds of battle, of curses and cries. I picked my way through the melee, protected by an ancient wand, protected by falling chandeliers and splintering stones as the Castle hearkened to my blood.

"Get him!" Shacklebolt shouted. "He must not get to the Headmaster's office!"

I had always been an excellent duelist, instinctive and graceful in movement, though not any of the survivors from the Order or the Ministry had reason to believe that these days, perhaps except Moody who had always inculcated in himself a healthy degree of paranoia for his opponents. And there, with the Castle's stones underneath my feet, I swung away from curse and fist, engaging nobody, for my purpose was not to battle men that day. I strode past the suits of armor and the vicious house-elves called to war, I strode past the ghosts that watched me with pitying eyes, I strode past the portraits that had heard me break every night, and I reached the gargoyle that had sealed me in the Headmaster's crypt for years.

"Lemon drop," I greeted it flatly. It scowled as it swerved open.

I hurried up the circular staircase. I did not think I had climbed it up or down under my own power even once. Harry had helped me up on some nights, when he had tired of cruelty. He had levitated me on others, delighting each time I struck stair or wall. He had kicked me down the stairs on many occasions, assuring me that Severus could easily put together my broken limbs and ribs just in time to repeat the maneuver.

I cut open my hand again and placed it on the door. It was warded still, but my blood was more potent than a dead man's wards.

"You came here."

It was Dumbledore's portrait. In death, as in life, he was powerful, his portrait commanding my attention over the other portraits. They had all seen me naked and broken, begging and craven, so many times. This office had been Harry's favorite, when Dumbledore had gone afield to wage war.

"I shan't require anything from you," I told the portrait crisply, trying to hold my composure. I had survived. He had not. Nothing else mattered, I told myself.

I stood in the middle of the office and focused, opening my mind carefully to the castle, inch by inch, cautious not to be overwhelmed by the ancient and wild magic of the stones. I would not have stood a chance if my mind had been in its previous state, but Tom had patched me in more ways than one. Magic licked my robes, it licked my skin, and then it licked my blood, and then it unfurled wild over my beating heart. I clung to my mind, to my will, to the destiny I had chosen, and asked for submission. Wards that had lingered for nearly half a century woke in rebellion, but I was of the blood of two of the Founders, twice-born, and my blood had fed the Castle during the years I had been their plaything, and Dumbledore's wards could not prevail against that sacrifice. I heard the portrait-frames clattering against the wall, the spindly glass instruments falling and breaking, the furniture shifting, and I heard curses faltering in the battle as they struggled to keep their footing in the wild lashes of ancient magic that beset them, determined to rid enemies from my dominion won by blood.

"You have always excelled at alchemy," Dumbledore's portrait said, and there was a finality to the tone.

I opened my eyes, panting and exhausted, still reeling from the alien magic that flooded through my veins. I was braced against the Headmaster's desk, and before me stood a man and a woman, wands drawn.

"For Harry!" They exclaimed, casting effortlessly together, and I crashed to the floor, losing my footing and hitting my head against the table's heavy leg. A red-haired man. A female voice. No, it had been a woman with red hair.

"You must kill him," Dumbledore's portrait was commanding.

Then the girl screamed as the boy fell to the ground. I heard curses flying, and Severus's voice, and Severus was standing between me and the two of them, shielding me with his body. I heard clattering up the stairs, Bella's heels quite distinctive. Then she must have taken over, for Severus was helping me up, and he smelled of potions and his magic was ruffled as he checked me over for injuries. I reached out, too shaken to control my reactive magic, and tasted guilt and grief and an emotion that I knew well these days.

"Stop that," he ordered, brisk and effective as ever, giving nothing away in his voice and face, as he tugged me to the nearest armchair and forced me to sit down. He peered into my eyes and cast a few spells to steady me, to stop the ringing in my eyes, to heal the gash I had made on my palm to open the warded doors.

It was just Bella and us. She must have had someone take Harry's friends away. Hermione, I remembered. I did not know the name of the boy. They must have been married or in love, for their magic had been effortlessly synchronized. And yet, they were not Harry. They had not cast with the viciousness and purpose that were characteristic of him. They could have killed me easily, weakened as I was from claiming the wards. They had instead chosen to incapacitate me. Perhaps they ought to have learned from their dead friend. Little wonder I had marked him as an equal. And he had marked me too. _As chattel, as cattle, as slave_ , I heard him say, through time, on that fated day, when I had finally been delivered from him into Tom's care. I swallowed the memory and looked properly at Severus, my unwanted savior who was undoubtedly the single reason I had survived it all. The portraits were missing.

"You vanished them somehow," he grumbled, unearthing a pouch from the depths of his robes and brandishing potions before my face.

Bella cast perfunctory charms before she let me down them. I was fatalistic when it came to Severus. He had always found a way to hold my life in the palm of his hands, deciding whether to betray me or save me.

"I vowed, Bellatrix!" He was yelling at her. "I vowed to Tom that I would see no harm come to our lord."

I was relieved to hear that. Severus, with his unending cleverness and resourcefulness, with a long history of betrayals, was not a man I wished to trust blindly, even if my magic trusted him right then.

"He is not your lord," she screeched, her face purple with anger, showing admirable restraint as she refrained from staring a duel.

"Bella, send for Tom, won't you?" I asked her, massaging my temples hoping to kill that creeping headache. "Wait downstairs for him. We will come down to the Great Hall in a few minutes."

"Are you sure?" she asked, scowling at Severus.

That was the third time she had asked me the same question.

"Quite so, Bella," I told her. "Thank you for saving my life, yet again. I shall manage to survive my encounter with Severus and join you in a moment."

"See that you do," she grumbled, casting Severus one last filthy glance, and heading down. She must have been sure of his vow. Say what I might about Bella, she was not one to take chances with my safety. And Tom had asked for a vow. I trusted that he would have ensured my safety.

When the door closed behind Bella, I told Severus, "You love me."

"I have always loved you," he muttered, fierce and stubborn and untrustworthy though I trusted him.

"You hated me," I reminded him. That had been true, I knew. It was difficult to hold his gaze, because old memories rose to my skin, of what he had betrayed me to, of the sights he had seen, of the countless times he had saved me.

"I thought hate was a bottomless cup," he said tiredly, looking at me as if I were a miracle. "Then I discovered that the fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, is that which rages in the place of dearest love. New loves follow old ones, and once I stopped hating you, there was only fierce love left to me."

He had always been stubborn and fierce, and he had learned to hate because he had been full of love nobody had wanted. Perhaps it was because of Tom that I found a chord of sympathy in me. His admission left me uncomfortable, because the love he spoke of had been in unholy times, when I had been barely more than a broken mind tethered to a broken body in a desperate bid to buy my beloved time. He had always craved to be needed, and I had needed him. I remembered Harry Potter's taunting about how I must be hungry for Severus's touch, about how he hurried to my aid.

Did I forgive him? No. I did not think I was capable of forgiveness. Nevertheless, I was sympathetic, because I was beginning to realize that I had undergone a great deal of trouble because of what Tom meant to me, even if I had not even recognized this at the time I had given myself to save him. Tom said I loved him. I still held that love was the least of it, even if I had no words for the emotions I held, for the truth of what he meant to me.

"There is no war left in me," I told Severus, finding the wherewithal to meet his haunted gaze, taking courage in the fact that it was almost over. "There is no politics left in me. There is no ambition or cause left in me. I came to end the siege because I was the only one who could claim the wards. You must live your life, Severus. I mean to live mine as I have chosen, whatever is left of it."

"I will not see you again," he said sadly.

I thought of two children playing on a broken swing, of a young boy begging for his beloved's life, of a hateful man betraying me twice, binding me to Harry Potter. This man who stood before me had been instrumental in the war, in my life and Harry's, through his love, through his betrayals and vows, through his skills and power.

"I wanted to give you this," he said, placing a pouch on my lap. I opened it absently, expecting more potions, and saw a broken twig of yew and a phoenix feather.

"Severus-" I could not speak, my voice catching on the words. I ran my fingers over the broken wand, and an echo of old magic called to me. I closed my eyes, tired and wretched.

"Thank you," I said finally. I looked up at him. He looked at me as if etching me into his memories. Then, with a soft curse, he knelt before me. I held still, wary and startled, clutching my broken wand to me possessively. He cupped my face in his hands. I remembered the shape of them, of each callus and scar on them, because he had touched me so many times, always gently. Taking a deep breath, I closed the distance between us and pressed a kiss to his forehead in benediction. I saw the swirl of emotions in his expressive eyes, I sensed the turmoil of his magic usually well-contained by his iron will, I felt the trembling of his fingers as they lingered on my face.

"Goodbye, Severus," I said, retreating, composing myself as best as I could.

"Goodbye, my lord," he murmured, standing unsteadily, and after one last look to drink me in, he strode out of the room.

And Tom found me a few minutes later.

"Severus confessed, didn't he?" He asked, coming to my side and pressing a kiss to my lips. "Oh, it is your wand!"

"My broken wand," I told him sharply, remembering how I had fainted when Dumbledore had cast the spell to break it. I had never resented what I had done that day, but the closest I came to was when I thought of my wand.

Then I took a deep breath and placed it back in the pouch, and looked up at Tom, "You have your Castle, my love."

Endearments came easier to me. I had spoken them awkwardly at first, thinking back often to how the Aurors and Potter would call me by those names, interspersed with lewder terms. However, Tom's ease at responding to me, his joy when I addressed him, and his own carefree usage of endearments when speaking to me had slowly helped me overcome my stiltedness.

He was not looking at me. He was lost in the Castle's magic. I realized that he had not come to this grand edifice of magic before.

"Do you like the magic?" I asked him, hoping to show him the only legacy I had left to my blood. I did not know what state the Chamber was in, but perhaps I could give him a tour.

"Take me to your cell," he said firmly.

I stared at him. It was unlike him to deliberately harm me, through word or act.

"Tom-"

He was implacable. I swallowed, knowing well that I would surrender to his will. Really, the entire pretense of equality we kept was only a pretense at the end. I was too broken to fight for it, but I was peeved nonetheless that he had chosen this moment to call me out on it.

I inhaled and opened the passageway that led upstairs, to the little garret where they had kept me. Each step was more difficult than the last. Tom followed me, crowding me, and I reached to touch the walls to stay grounded.

"There is dried blood on the stairs," he said, looking sick and pale in the light of his wand.

"My blood," I speculated. I had lost a great deal of blood on a daily basis. "Or maybe Harry's scar. It was always bleeding."

We had reached the top. I gulped and let Tom pass me, to open the stone door to the garret. It smelled of piss and stale blood and despair. There was magic still, a confused medley of Dumbledore's magic and mine, of Harry's magic and Severus's, of the Castle's magic clinging to all of it.

Six feet by twelve feet. I could not make out the ceiling. There was the sunken cot where I had spent most of my time when I had been not on my knees or my belly. There was the chamberpot gleaming dully in the corner. There was the scorch mark on the floor where once my wild magic had burned down an Auror or two guarding Cornelius. Veritaserum lingered in the air still. They had, towards the end, been uncaring as to the damage it wrought, and all of Severus's antidotes had served me not. My madness, only controlled by strength of will and the horcrux's proximity, had been given free rein then, and my captors had been unable to fetch anything of value from their relentless questioning. Eventually, they gave up, and returned to debasing me in predictable ways, guided by Harry. 

I felt Tom's hands coming about my waist, sure and desperate. His fears overwhelmed mine. For all that I had dreaded returning here, I found that I was oddly calm. I tasted my old magic, wrought of a broken mind, and I could only be glad that I had survived. Yes, I would never leave this garret behind me, but I had learned to live with it.

"Every day I saw this wretched place in Severus's memories, I prayed," he murmured, his voice trembling, his body a warm line behind me. "I prayed that it was the last time I would have to see you here. I wavered each time, torn between asking Severus to give you that final mercy and praying that something might finally come to our favor, that something might finally bring you to me. In the end, my selfishness won each time. I wanted you to come back to me, even as a shadow, even as a dream."

Harry had wept over me. He had broken me, each time worse than the time before, and he had pummeled our bond with remorse. How was it that I was only a murderer and could feel no remorse, and that he, despite all that he wrought upon me, had been able to?

"If you saw everything, you must have also seen how determined I was to stay alive to keep you safe," I reminded him. "You were enough to hold me to life, then and now, and as long as you want me around."

He shifted to face me, and he took my face in his and kissed me desperately, as if pouring his pure and whole soul into the crevices of me that were empty. I kissed him back, passionately, high on the Castle's magic and the realization that I had survived.

"I mean to live my days out with you," I told him firmly. "You are welcome to politics, to making something out of yourself, but I am going back to your estate in Montserrat."

"You want a life of a wastrel in the company of Agwe and his weed," he accused me, though I could feel his smile against my lips.

"Quite so," I agreed. "In fact, I regret that we did not pack a joint. I could use a puff or two to settle my nerves. Britain is too dramatic for my tastes these days. "

"I am done with Britain then," he said, affecting a tragic sigh, though his happiness was a contagious thing pervading the dismal garret. "I shall be lord of my estate, and you can loll around a kept man for the rest of our days. Now let us get back to Narcissa. She will be quite cross if we miss dinner."

\----

Narcissa's dinner was a tasteful, resplendent affair. She had left an empty setting for Draco's place at the table.

I sat between Tom and Bella. They were discussing what constituted a rave party.

"LSD," I explained to them, and they stared at me as if I were jesting.

"Ecstasy, if you are frugal," I allowed.

"We were discussing The Who and Genesis," Tom clarified, looking amused despite his attempt to hold a solemn face.

"He has always chased highs," Bella said disapprovingly, conspiratorially, as if she were a paragon of good judgment. "Why else do you think he hired Severus in the first place?"

Severus had never brewed anything more interesting than Dreamless Sleep. He was quite taken with the purity of potions. Whatever potions I had managed to get high on, I had brewed them myself. It had been long ago. I did not remember any of it very well.

Lucius, sitting across me, glared sternly marking his disapproval of the conversation, but then put aside his customary reserve to offer, "My father's house-elves were fond of your brews, my lord. They drove us up the wall, after one of your experiments, ecstatic as they were. They painted the manor blue. My father was furious."

I wished that I remembered, if only because I had never seen a house-elf high. Tom, sitting beside me, muttered, "Don't!"

I suppressed a smile and picked at my dinner. The mood at the table was jovial, celebratory as they marked the end of the war, despite the frostiness between Lucius and Narcissa. I watched Tom mediate between them, to little result.

Sighing at the tragic comedy that had become my life, I lifted my goblet of wine and toasted, "To Lucius and Narcissa, for their unwavering commitment to our cause, for their sacrifices in times of our direst need. I would not be here if not for Tom, and Tom would not be here if not for the both of you."

"Hear, hear!" Tom said, following suit, raising his goblet, and the rest of the table followed us.

They stared at us, irked and gladdened.

"We did what was necessary," Narcissa said, stoic in her convictions, having more of a backbone than all the men of her house.

"Yes," Lucius allowed, tired but accepting of the choices they had made, and he took her hand in his. "We did what was necessary." He raised his goblet to us. "May you find the happiness you deserve. We know you mean to leave. This is home too, for both of you. And we hope that you will return one day."

Lucius could be painfully sentimental when he chose to put aside his reserve. He had, after all, buried my book of poetry with his father. Luckily for me, Tom stepped in, effusively grateful and warm, and as the table fell back into easy conversations, Narcissa met my gaze with a genuine smile.

Perhaps it was a tale of her family in the end. Abraxas had sired Lucius. He had also sired Tom, of my diary and his heart. Dorea had married Charlus, and Harry was her grandchild. Walburga's sons had betrayed me. Of Druella's daughters, Andromeda had hated our causes, but Bella had always been mine. Narcissa was a mirror that reflected the world, or so I thought, until she raised Tom to be the man he had become, until she fought a war to save her family. Even now, she voluntarily wore the mantle of leadership as she prepared to take the country through the birth pangs of democracy, safeguarding our privacy, letting us escape to rebuild our lives.

As we prepared to retire, I caught up to where Narcissa was, as she stood conversing with her house-elves.

"My lord," she said, easy and assured, as she accepted my arm. "I have never seen Tom so happy."

"I owe you," I told her plainly.

"Then visit us," she said, looking up at me without an iota of calculation. She had never looked at me so before. "Lucius and I will do what is necessary, as long as we live, regardless of the state of our marriage, not that I am unappreciative of your efforts to reconcile us." She took a deep breath. "After Draco, we had one reason to live, to fight this war. Visit us when you can. Let us see you."

"I know you love Tom," I said quietly. "I shan't keep him from visiting you, Narcissa."

"Both of you," she said sharply, sounding very much like her late mother. "I nursed him at my breast, just as I nursed the son born of my womb. Yes, I love Tom. Each time Draco returned to us with Severus's memories, I saw what you had given to save Tom. I saw more than you would have preferred me to, no doubt, and yet, it is late to pretend for pretense's sake. I began this war because Tom wanted to save you. By the end, I was fighting because I wanted to save you. You are family."

"I had no mother," I told her frankly. "I managed to get by with very little knowledge of women."

She knew everything. Almost everyone did, these days. I could not bring myself to care anymore about those revelations, about how every fact of my life had been made available for public consumption. I had heard from Fenrir that even details around my imprisonment had been publicized, thanks to the enterprising efforts of the remaining Weasleys and their renegade radio channel.

"Your mother was my friend," I continued. "At least, I believe she tried to be my friend. I had other concerns at the time. Many years later, I find myself looking at you, and I find that I have never respected anyone more in my life. I look at you, and think of the girl you were, in pigtails, clinging to Druella's skirts, defenseless and easily scared, raised to marry and give birth, lacking Andromeda's convictions and Bella's ambitions. And here you are, claiming _me_ as family, after you sang a dark song of blood and war to bring me back. I don't claim to understand you. I won't naysay you."

It was the truth. If she wanted me after all that had happened, she was welcome to me. Perhaps she was merely buttering me up because she wanted Tom to visit her frequently. Her magic was free of deceit and manipulation, and I chose to trust, remembering how she had asked me to make a port-key, trusting me with complex magic at a time I had not trusted myself to even do a buttoning spell.

She smiled at me brightly, reminding me of Tom, and she pressed a kiss to my cheek.

"Visit me," she reiterated. "You could come alone, if you wish to. I know how you take your tea."

"Mean to domesticate me, don't you?" I asked without rancor, shaking my head at her willfulness, as she laughed and left me at the head of the corridor that led to their floo.

Tom was already there, impatient and holding out a port-key.

"You smell of Narcissa's talcum," he complained, winding his arms about me, as we waited for the port-key.

"So do you," I said, laughing at the face he made.

"She said I have to come back for the trials," he confided, looking none too pleased about the prospect.

"You committed to ending this war," I reminded him, as we began spinning away. We ended up in the garden path, as we had many months ago, when we had arrived bleeding and broken, but blessedly together.

"I made no such promise," he complained, following me up the path, unfurling the umbrella he held as the rains lashed down. "I committed to getting you back."

I never tired of hearing him say that. "Trials provide closure," I told him, my mind already on other matters.

"I will go if you go with me," he bargained, childish and willful.

"Oh, you truly are her child," I teased him, kissing the scowl off his lovely face. I tugged him to our bedroom and pushed him to the chaise. His expression turned to warm concern as I began disrobing.

"Are you sure?" He asked me, rising to place his hands over mine.

"Quite," I assured him. "I don't care if I have to dose you up with aphrodisiacs, you are fucking me tonight."

And I was sure. I had not been, until then, even if I had been keen to have him fuck me, if only to understand how the experience differed when it was with a trustworthy partner. After stepping foot in that garret again, after returning to Malfoy Manor again, I realized the magnitude of the war he had fought, and the love that underpinned his cause. He had had my mind and soul. Why would I withhold my body if he desired it?

"Do you want me to close the curtains?" He asked, still concerned for me, his magic fluttering about me in love and want and acceptance.

"No, I want you to look at me," I said, moving his hands away so that I could return to my undressing. "Be a good boy and go sit down, won't you?"

He flushed in surprise. I had noticed that he liked taking orders from me. Perhaps it was the age difference. Perhaps each time I ordered him about, he felt the imbalance between us due to my trauma-ridden past was righted just a little. He drank me in with his eyes, mouth parted, as I stripped to my underclothes. I walked to him and shoved his legs apart, and when I sunk to my knees in the gap between his legs, his thrice-damned chivalry woke up again.

"Are you sure?" He asked, though his cock was fat and needy against the silk of his robes.

"Shut up," I ordered, and bent to mouth him through the robes, finding the act delightfully erotic, particularly when he whined and leapt into me. I placed my hands at his hips so that he would stop squirming, and dragged my teeth over the protuberance of his cock.

"If you don't want me to come, you should stop," he said, in a thin reedy voice, his hands dragging up and down my neck and back, caressing my shoulders. "Get up, please. I want you on the bed and I want to see you properly. You can't-" he choked, as I began sucking him through the silk. Really, he stood no chance. I had done little else in my extended stay in Dumbledore's domain and I had been highly incentivized to be bloody good at it. His hands clutched my shoulders in desperation as he rode my mouth to completion, until we were both groaning together, until I realized that I was aroused too. Harry Potter had known many tricks to make me needy through chemical and magical assistance, but my will that resisted the Imperius also resisted pleasure and I had never climaxed during those activities. I had not made much out of it then, since I had never been a creature of high sex drive. Here though, I was drunk on giddy power as Tom came, and I was aroused and could barely see straight as he pulled me up, as I went to him clinging, as he dumped me across his lap and pulled my underclothes off. He brought a hand to my mouth, and used the other to draw me closer still. He sighed as I laved his fingers and curled myself into his heat. His hand was sure as it came to my cock. I jerked in surprise at the heat and the lovely pleasure of it, as he tugged me to orgasm.

I came to in the bed. He was lying beside me, propped up on an elbow, as he traced his fingers over the many scars and marks on my torso.

"You were quite out of it," he said smugly, rightly proud of his prowess. "I have never heard a male voice hit that pitch you did when you came."

Screaming under the Cruciatus for a few years tended to do that to the vocal chords. _You shriek like a woman_ , Harry had told me. I was too comforted by the luxuriant afterglow to mind that nonsense, right then. I relaxed into Tom's questing hands, quite content to let him look and touch and kiss. Now that I knew I could strip down and still hold his interest, I was not unduly concerned about his flares of pity and sorrow as he discovered each mark Potter had left on me.

"Tell me if you want me to stop," he asked quietly, his voice full of misgivings and sorrows. "Tell me if anything hurts."

"I have had the best healer in the Caribbean see to me for months. Nothing hurts. If anything, some of them tingle pleasantly when you kiss them. We shall have to run experiments."

"I like the sound of that," he said, happier, though still reverent as he touched me, as if I were a holy grail he had fought a crusade to get to. I closed my eyes and stretched, arching into his body. He lingered over each scar, each scrawl in Parseltongue and English, and I felt his mouth naming them, one by one. What a foolish man, but I was his greatest folly, so I could not bring myself to mind.

When I felt his tears on my skin, I decided it was time to intervene. "I don't even think about any of them these days, preoccupied as I am with my grand seduction of you," I said, teasing him, wringing a reluctant grin out of him at the picture I had painted. Between us, neither of us had needed to seduce the other. We had loved before we had made love.

"Which one do you mind the most?" He asked, though he well knew.

I remembered him demanding that I take him up to the garret where I had been imprisoned. He had cried there, and confessed that he had selfishly held to hopes of my return. _Come back, as a dream, as a shadow - just come back_ , he had prayed.

"Tell me," he begged.

"You know which one," I said quietly.

It was the only mark I had not made terms with. Agwe had fought tooth and nail, using all the skills of his trade, to heal that one. We had left it too late, because of the battle, and I had nearly died. Severus had healed every other one right in the nick of time.

"Show me, please," Tom begged again, determined and loving, as he nudged my legs open.

"Not like this," I said, turning over, pressing my face into the bed so that I might not embarrass myself by crying before him yet again. I was quite determined to make the night an erotic success and tears had no place in my plans. I expected him to open me with his hands and look. Instead, I jerked up, surprised then I felt his warm, wet tongue diving into the cleft of my arse.

"Tom," I began half-heartedly, before lapsing into a sigh, as his tongue traced the edges of the brand. He laved it thoroughly and the raised, still-sensitized scar tissue dragged need up my spine.

"I wish I spoke Parseltongue," he said, surfacing for a moment to press a loud, smacking kiss into the hollow at the base of my spine.

"I am quite glad you don't," I managed, wet where his mouth had been, frazzled and needy.

Harry Potter had reserved the most humiliating words for Parseltongue. It was a secret written into my skin that only the two of us could read and he had taken particular delight in debasing me in a language that I had given unto him. I could only shudder at the thought of what that final brand might be.

"I need to investigate more," Tom declared, getting back between my legs, and returning his mouth to that place, until I was barely lucid, until my magic was crawling over his skin demanding and begging, until I was ordering him to hurry up and stuff his cock in me. He took to orders well, I decided happily, when he filled me and pressed his head to my shoulder with a long, stuttering sigh.

"Now fuck me, and I will consider letting you do it again," I demanded, thrusting back as best as I could, though I had little leeway in the position he had me in.

"Oh, you are going to let me do this again," he promised, suddenly mischievous, as he dragged long keening sounds out of me with fingers and mouth and cock, with sweetly filthy words whispered into my ears. I had no fond memories of the words they had used, but I decided that from his lips, they sounded as every other declaration of love he had claimed me with.

\-----

Later, once he was fast asleep, I rolled a joint, hoping that I remembered to banish the smell before he woke and complained.

I thought of the marks on him, fading mementos from the war, of stray curses and explosions. He passed them off lightly, blaming them on carelessness, and assuring me that none of them had been serious.

I felt that familiar stickiness between my thighs. And there was no Severus to clean me up briskly. There was no blood or piss or worse to clean up. I thought of how he had worked in the guttering light of his lantern, quietly and briskly. I thought of Potter's scar bleeding onto me during those rare days he carried me up, whispering that it would be all right, even if it was quite clear by then that neither of us knew what that might mean. I thought of Tom, drinking conjured water once he heard of my plight, saying that the least he could do was to join me in this most minor of my torments.

How unusual, I noted, that I wanted to reenact this sexual arrangement with Tom. I was curious about how it might be to reverse our places, but I was more eager still to have him bugger me again. It must be a learned response. Perhaps I was striving to overwrite the old with the new. Perhaps I genuinely had come to like buggery. I shook my head at that notion. Masochism and blood were quite far from the general periphery of my sexual interests, of which there were few to begin with. Perhaps it was him. He had been my safe place, my mind's quiet, long before I had been thrown into that garret.

"Are you all right? Don't tell me you have started smoking in bed," He murmured, sleepy and concerned, as he ran his fingers over my stomach in a soothing manner, dipping his thumb into my navel and hooking it into a tug, as if illustrating the technique behind port-key magic.

Many said that the human identity was in the heart, the soul, or the mind. Was not nature's creation through an umbilical cord? I suspected that Eastern traditions had the right of it, that men born of wombs had their centre at the gut. I lost my train of thought, for Tom had decided to lave his fingers before hooking one into my navel and pulling. I laughed at the odd sensation, and he laughed with me. His eyes were bright and intense, as he rapidly lost sleep's vestiges, and his happiness soaked my magic until all I knew was bliss. I lay back and let him touch. I sighed when he pressed his lips to my navel, and then growing bolder still, he stuck his tongue and began slowly mimicking copulation.

"Would you like to fuck me?" He asked politely, as if curious to know how I took my tea. I suppressed a smile at the contradiction he painted with his passion-touched face, with his heavy breathing, with his cock smearing precome against my thigh, with his trembling hands tracing patterns across my skin. He did want it very much indeed. And I found then, when his fingers brushed my cock and balls, that I wanted it badly.

So I took him, and he was as magnificent as stallions at the Kentucky Derby, as he used his nimble, athletic form to ride me, head thrown back, crying out soft words that I did not listen to, caught as I was in my own pleasure. Pleasure had been disjoint and objective for a very long time, ever since I had begun dabbling in soul magic of the sort that affected the mind. Insanity was not conducive to flow, and flow I did, from sensation to sensation, as he reared atop me carefree and fierce, as he dragged my fingers from where they gripped his hips to his cock. He was tiring and grunted in frustration when his jerky movements did not get him the penetration he wanted. I knew that I ought to participate more actively, but my mind was ablaze and my body had succumbed to his will.

"Come on," he asked plaintively, placing his hands on my ribs and clutching hard.

I managed to pull myself together enough to gather him into my arms and turn us about. His hands fluttered up to my neck and twined to force my mouth to meet his. I braced my hands against the bed and began thrusting as rhythmically as I could manage, drawing upon what I had gleaned from my observations of others, drawing upon the sordid rags, distributed to soldiers to keep up their morale during the war, I had read as a prepubescent so many years ago. He came first, much to my relief, and I slowed my movements so that he may be lulled into postcoital glow softly. He narrowed his eyes, and then cast about to pick up his wand, and said softly,

"Legilimens."

"Oh-" I brought my face to the crook of his neck and panted open-mouthed against his skin. So many had tried it before, hoping to catch me in the throes of battling physical stimuli. I had not ceded my mind when I had ceded my body, not once, before then. He clutched me possessively, just as his mind unfurled through the crevices of mine, as the maker to the made, as first rain over parched and broken earth. I gave into him, surrendering mind and seed.

He cut off the spell and held me through my tremors, occasionally murmuring sweet words to soothe, occasionally skirting his hands over the expanse of my back.

 

"I hope I pleased you?" I enquired, finally finding the wherewithal to lift my head and press kisses to the curve of his smile at the corners of his lips.

"Very much so," he said, laughing freely, his magic singing with his luxuriant satisfaction. I felt quite proud of myself. And I began to see the appeal in buggery. "Did the spell hurt you?"

"No, not at all," I replied, lifting myself off him to lie beside him, stretching my limbs in satiation. "Legilimency hurts when you resist the caster. It is quite the pleasurable sensation when you yield your mind to another's keeping; indeed the Imperius is based on that concept."

 

I knew that there were kinky couples among the Death Eaters who took the Imperius into the boudoir. I wondered what it might be like. I knew I would gladly let him try, if he wanted to. I did not desire it myself. I preferred the receptivity and the deliberation in surrender that Legilimency allowed.

"It was as gliding," he murmured.

"The maker and the made," I noted, and he laughed again at my silliness, and turned to kiss me possessively.

"You had a hand in my making," he pointed out. "Perhaps it is only fair."

I felt it easier to slide into sleep then, in the safety of his many touches, lulled by postcoital pleasure that lingered in my veins still.

"You are happy," he noted.

Language lacked descriptors complete enough to express the intensity of most emotions, I decided. Happiness was the least of it.

There would be a different time to argue semantics.

"Yes, I am," I replied. "I am with you."

\-----


	4. Brown Sugar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (please mind your step around recovery from trauma)

The trials began slowly. There had been many negotiations of disarmament necessary before they could begin.

Narcissa had her hands full wooing back the Wizengamot to office. However, as the old stuff-bags in the courts knew, no civil war would easily usurp their power. They played coy, but they returned, most of them, to reclaim their seats. A handful demanded to know where I was, and if I would face justice.

Despite my intentions to stay on the other side of the world, Tom's involvement meant that I returned too, if only to ease his cares. The sooner we were done, the sooner we could leave. We moved into his rooms in Malfoy Manor, and our return, temporary though it be, enlivened our hosts.

Narcissa was often at the Ministry, but Lucius took over the task that had preoccupied her all of her adult life, of making the Manor warm. The stones responded easily to him, recognizing blood, and for the first time the warming spells lingered comfortingly heavy in the large, high-ceilinged chambers repelling the constant draughts. His endeavors turned many rooms in the eastern wing inhabitable again.

I moved into Abraxas's old study there, and spent my time writing.

Agwe had often asked me to write when I had a bad day, when I woke veering close to a panic attack. I did not think too much of his suggestion, but he had proven himself an excellent healer that I began to attempt jotting down thoughts on parchment.

Parseltongue, in the beginning, because some of my writings were intensely personal in nature; eventually I began to see what I had once known, that I had a bent for casting sweeping, intergenerational, inter-cultural ideas into a single framework of representation. I was no philosopher, even if I was more familiar than most with the subject, since I had grown up in a war that had birthed many of the finest minds in the arts and the sciences. And then, ambition, burned out to cinders by Harry Potter, bloomed a new bud.

I began writing in English, lapsing into Parseltongue only when I wrote of matters private. I had loose ideas as to the eventual designs, but I produced prodigious volumes of scattered thoughts when I committed to this new adventure. Tom, ever so mindful of my boundaries, had not requested to read, though I could see the bright curiosity in his eyes each time he came to find me poring over parchment, editing and revising, and writing. I wished, on some occasions, that I had someone to proof-read and to help me sort the scribblings into a coherent compendium. I did my best to structure them, but I knew there needed to be more rigor and conciseness.

I had been an excellent speaker in my prime, but I had also been passionate and spontaneous before audiences. I could not fall back on those traits when it came to this medium of parchment and quill. I needed to persuade and argue through words alone, through a carefully tailored flow of lucid ideas knitting together to form conclusions.

Wizarding books were reliant upon moving pictures and the wonder of magic to conquer their readers. Little wonder that most avid readers in this world were the ones who had come over from the Muggle world, easily captivated as they were for the rest of their lives by the beauty of magic. Children raised in this world tended to be practitioners, applying magic, for it was a birthright taken for granted, and there was little need to write of it, or read of it. Even wizards who valued research and education as Flamel or Dumbledore had not committed their lives to writing, to leaving a legacy for the next generations. Reproducibility and accessibility of discoveries and ideas had never been their forte.

Muggle science progressed because each man stood on the shoulders of those who came before. There would be no Einstein without Newton and Leibniz, and they stood on the shoulders of others, all the way until Plato and Euclid. Indeed, the progress of civilization was a progress of ideas, one starting where another left off. What was science but mathematics, and what was mathematics but philosophy, and what was philosophy but psychology applied to the natural world that included the self, and what was psychology but the imperfect human mind stripped and examined?

"Are you writing for the trial?" Bella asked, when she walked in.

She was dressed in light-weight grey robes that made her look young and pretty. Narcissa had aged into their mother, while Bella and Andromeda had both favored the Blacks. The Blacks, I remembered, had been slow to age. Azkaban had ruined everyone physically, but Bella and her late cousin had made it through with their looks intact.

While I had been absently pondering the quirks of the human gene, she sat across me and drew the closest parchment to her. Her eyes widened. She looked up at me, as if my permission mattered to her these days. I was a defanged creature who struggled to make terms with the fact. And yet, Bella humored me, as if pretending nothing had changed.

> "Each of us creates his own world, his own truth, shaped by what he sees, what he tastes, what he touches, what he hears. The world, then, is only a reflection of his consciousness.
> 
> If that be so, why do these individual worlds have much in common, giving rise to a single unified framework in popular, contemporary discourse? We must look to evolution for that answer: the human experience has been one of gathering into tribes of fifty or sixty. Tribes were required to cooperate for safety, for prosperity, for mating. It then became imperative that everyone in the tribe modified his world to suit the others', converging eventually to a single abstraction that became the world for the tribe. This was an unconscious, organic decision, for all that it became a policy passed into the annals of unrecorded history.
> 
> Tribes could withstand nature. Yet, when they began competing for scarce resources, they did not have the manpower to guarantee survival. Thus was birthed politics, as they allied with and against each other, and these groups of tribes began slowly reshaping their perceived worlds into a single one. Thus came the flat earth, and the oceans beginning and never-ending after the Hebrides, and the Barbarians that ate their young. None of this was the reflection of a single consciousness. Instead, politics and protection wove together a nexus of shared fears and needs into an increasingly colorful representation of the world which exceeded any man's ability to perceive with only his senses.
> 
> Nature intervened, as it often does. The fragile representation of the world nursed by these tribes could not assign satisfactory explanations for the havoc of nature. They birthed the Gods then, to hold them accountable for forces that did not respect their agreed upon world.
> 
> In seeking to establish causality and explainability, they gave themselves fate and force.
> 
> Tribes became countries and states.
> 
> And some questioned the contractual representation of the world. Why? They wondered. Why was the earth flat when they had sailed over the edge and returned to tell the tales? Why were the barbarians child-eaters when they had travelled across steppe and mountains to see mothers loving and nursing and grieving? Where were the Gods outside the leaves of the Homeric hymns? Why were the forces beyond the human explanation of the world? Was fate an excuse? They began again. They fathered ideas. Others began where they left off. Out of their pains to prove causality, they birthed logic, a slipshod framework born of many assumptions, and they hoped to explain at least an approximation of the world in a systematic, deliberate manner. Pedagogy and rigor became their companions as they fought dogma and society. Knowledge was born of them, as they sought to find the answers to how and why.
> 
> Magic is a force. Then all that follows is causality. Such would be the most trivial explanation of our world. And yet, that explanation breaks down when we consider that magic lives in blood, that magic lives in stones, that magic lives outside physical containments too. A force cannot be contained, does not exist except when it does. So magic is no force."

Bella had a singsong voice, with a lovely lilt that touched the vowels and a sweep over the consonants. In her speech, my words became alive, became real.

"I did not know you wrote," she said, looking up at me. "This is-" she took a deep breath, looking over the words again. "This is brilliant. I have never read anything like this."

I smiled despite myself, hearkening to her praise. For the first time since they had rescued me from captivity, there was no pity or concern in her eyes. There was only admiration.

"I need an editor," I told her, emboldened. She was no theorist, but she had a good enough head on her shoulders. And she was at loose ends, with no war to fight, with no warlord left to be an enforcer for.

"If you duel with me in the afternoons, I will gladly take on that," she said.

Her eyes were as bright as Dumbledore's. I had not taken to the wand. Most everyone who knew me knew that. Fenrir had, in fact, told me that I was holding it as if I was afraid it would infect me with some disease or the other.

The dueling arena was outside the Manor. It must have been built many centuries ago, in medieval times, when tournaments had been popular among the lords and the ladies.

Lucius, in his newfound motivations to restore the Manor, had cleared off the brambles and leveled the grounds of the arena. The stone rings of the coliseum were broken and there were bushes growing through them. The ornately carved pavilion which must have once held the elite was crumbling down and Lucius had built a balustrade alongside to ensure it did not come tumbling down upon our heads.

Bella was wearing her customary black. I had kitted up in thick robes, and languished in the cold still. The skies above us were dark and gloomy. Lucius sat on the lowest stone ring, armed with a handful of potions and an umbrella, and he had the good grace to ask the house-elves to light a few torches around us.

I had only made out the edges of Bella before, but I knew that I could rely upon my magic usually to make up where my vision was ruined.

I could feel a flame within her hands, and thought of the core of her wand, of a dragon's heartstring, pumping magic as it had once pumped blood to a beast's heart. It was a powerful, protective core. I knew the tale of it.

She had walked by Ollivander's, with Druella, on some errand or the other to the Alley, and Ollivander had come rushing out, chivvying them in. He had just made the wand, and it had clamored for the owner it wanted. _Unyielding_ , he had remarked, seeing a pudgy girl of six calm it.

When she had been captured and taken to Azkaban, Lucius had pulled strings and spent a great deal of money to retrieve her wand into his safekeeping.

I saw her bow to me. _Bow_ , Dumbledore had said. I had taken it as a slight then. I had not then comprehended that I would be spending the next three years bowing and bending. That was the last time I had duelled. I bowed to Bella and eased into a dueling stance. She was prowling to and fro, never stationary. Sirius Black had cut through my Death Eaters like butter, in the first war, vicious and cruel as only a Black could be. He had been a powerful wizard, perhaps one of the most powerful of our times. And Bella had killed him. I felt a spark of pride. I had trained her to be better than her ancestry. She had been a witch when she came to me. I had made her a magician.

"Crucio!" She yelled, dancing closer in a whirl, never one for subtlety.

I shielded instinctively, drawing magic from the air around us, from the stones beneath me, and the torches sputtered.

"Use the wand, my lord!" she called out, laughing at my reactive display.

Mortified, I withdrew the shield and cast a disarming spell at her, merely to test how she was shielding. She did not shield, of course she did not. She swerved away from it at the very last instant, bloody smug and proud of herself.

"Crucio!" She called out again, and I shielded again, conducting the magic of the manor into my blood. The world spun around me, and I fell heaving , reaching out blindly with my palms to break my fall on the ungiving earth. I was shaking and cold, as magic left me in a rush. I felt Lucius rising, in concern. I quickly lifted a hand to wave him away, nauseated at the thought that I was still so inept. I stumbled to my feet in haste, to face her, where she stood twirling her wand, ready to cast again.

"It is not Hogwarts," Lucius said. I knew that. This was not ground that answered to me by blood and lineage. It had only been instinctive. Did he think I had deliberately made the mistake of calling in sentient magic from the surround?

"Crucio!" She cast again, and the spell was breathtaking in its magnificence, a thousand sharpened knives rushing through the air at the speed of light.

I raised Dumbledore's wand, which shook giddy in my grip as it ate the curse. She cast again, laughing, and I cast too, for the first time with deliberation. The wand surged in my hand, drinking of my intentions, and she barely avoided a bone-shattering curse. It hit the stone wall behind her with a deafening crack and Lucius conjured yet another balustrade to hold the ruins. The next Cruciatus she cast with a bigger spread, knowing well that I could not pull the earlier trick of consuming it into the wand. There was nowhere to swerve to. I took a deep breath and Apparated away, appearing behind her, and she swerved away from my kick before I could knock her down. There was adrenaline pumping through my body, and my instinctive reaction to Apparation was a panic attack I managed to stave off with deep breaths.

"We have to kill the Muggle in you!" She crowed, laughing at my tactics, and cast again.

What secrets of my origins I had guarded was public knowledge. Nevertheless, it was painful to hear her mock me. The distraction of it gave her an opening, as her next Cruciatus hit my shoulder. I fell back, against the stones, and Lucius's buffering charm caught me just in the nick of time, sparing my fragile bones. It did nothing to spare me from the Cruciatus though. It sawed through the wreckage of my body, sensitising nerves and breaking blood vessels, and I was screaming and thrashing. There was no mockery. Lucius and Bella had learned the Cruciatus at my knees, after all. They respected the curse and its effects. I heard Bella's wand rising to cast another Cruciatus. She was no kind mistress. I had not raised her to be one. I clutched the wand in my hands, and thanked Tom for giving me a mind that was whole, and poured my magic into the elder, tempering its bloodthirst with my intention. Raw channelling would kill her, I knew. I forced my will over its, and wondered if Dumbledore had fought its nature everyday of his life. A streak of bright, white light cut off her Cruciatus. I cast a repairing charm on myself. Agwe despaired of my methods, but blood and skin and bones were just substances to an alchemist, as repairable as any other material.

"Crucio!" I called out, and she swerved, though I could sense her keen satisfaction at my refusal to cave in.

We battled then, with curse and counter-curse, vicious and deadly, and Lucius kept pace with us, conjuring balustrades to keep the debris from crushing us. All was light and sound and fury, as we danced. I had once loved dueling, I had loved walking that edge between glory and fall, and as we sparred, I began to see what I had once seen. My senses were wide open, and my magic rushed in a heady conduit into the wand, my wand since it was Dumbledore's no more, and the more I cast, the more the wand and I bonded in our quest to survive and prevail. Bella made no allowances for my physical limitations, for my poor vision, for my fragile bones, and I was glad for that. She dealt me the same pain she had dealt anyone else that stood between her and her victories. She cast a blood-boiling curse and a bone-shattering curse in quick succession. I shielded and swerved, only to be caught by the might of her Cruciatus, and I managed still to fall into her, and took her face in my hands, channeling my pain to her cranium. She cut off the curse, laughing and heaving, and did not resist when I disarmed her.

"That was not a duel," she remarked, dragging us both to where Lucius waited with a happy grin. "We will have to teach you to use a wand again, my lord."

Yes, that was true. Nevertheless, the wand in my hand clung to me tighter than it had before the duel, as wood and man established ownership over each other in an irrevocable way. I grabbed the potions Lucius had neatly lined up, one by one, and toasted Bella.

"I spoke with Ollivander last week," Lucius said, casting diagnostic charms over each of us in turn.

He must have learned them from Severus. Those were Severus's creations. Thinking of Severus made me uneasy. I had heard that he had been taken into Ministry custody, that he was awaiting trial. He had not asked me to testify in his favor. I knew, however, that my testimony if given, would be instrumental. Harry, Dumbledore, Minerva and Draco were dead. They had been the only others who knew his tale and could prove it with memories.

"I had wanted to return Draco's wand," Lucius said quietly.

Generally, in families as theirs, if someone died, the wand went to their children. Draco had died young. Bella leaned into him, and he sighed. He was more accepting of her gestures of unspoken comfort than Narcissa was, I had noticed.

"He asked me if you would mind visiting him," he continued, looking at me. "I told him that I would be happy to receive him a visitor here, when you were in residence, but he told me that you might prefer calling in at his shop."

I was about to reply, when one of the balustrades gave way and stones came tumbling down. I caught them instinctively in a net of magic. Bella sighed in awe, always enthralled by displays of power and skill, before she tutted and said, "We must teach you to use a wand again. All that knee-jerk magic is awful on your nervous system."

I used the wand to knit back the balustrades, under her stern gaze.

"I think your volley of the Cruciatus was worse on my nerves," I remarked, euphoric after the duel, feeling clean and ready in a way I had not in a long while.

"Ha, Potter did worse," she muttered, looking away. Lucius cleared his throat.

As much as I tried to term him Potter in my thoughts, Harry he remained, in the open void where our bond had once been. Perhaps it was a manifestation of the captor-captive dynamics Freud and Jung had liked discussing. Perhaps it was only the natural outcome of the ties between us. Nevertheless, I had begun making my terms with it, and Harry he was allowed to be in my thoughts.

Harry's Cruciatus was powerful, but often diffused by the horcrux in him that disliked seeing me in pain. It had been worse when the Aurors had cast together, twenty-five men casting the Cruciatus as if it were a symphony, and I had been in their midst, stripped and bleeding, weeping when I was not screaming, begging when I was not gargling on blood. When Severus had finally managed to get to me, in the dawn, he had to bind me down since my body would not cease thrashing, getting in the way of his efforts to stabilize my breathing and my heart.

"Allow me to naysay that, my dear," I told Bella. "He was running on power and hatred; the effects, while heavy-handed, were often unreliable and inconsistent. If you had been in his place, I would have joined the Longbottoms after a month or so."

"I learned from the best," she said, laughing, dispelling the heaviness that had fallen upon us when she had brought up the anguish and endless debasement of those years.

"It is your turn to teach me, then," I jested, taking her arm in mine, unable to resist sharing a knowing glance with Lucius when she leaned in close.

It was no secret among the Inner Circle that nothing set off Bella's sex drive like a good duel. High on endorphins, she would cling to the closest men, taunting and inviting, until her husband managed to extricate her and carry her to bed. She had been like that even with me, though it was equally no secret amongst them that I had about as much sex-drive as a potted plant.

"Go to your husband," I told her. She laughed and ran away, shameless in her needs, antonym to her sisters both.

The rumors revolving around my sexuality were only glimpsed by me in occasional breaches of Legilimency. They had feared me too much to fantasize and speculate openly, after all. I had held onto my reserve and fiercely guarded my privacy with a veneer of untouchability; I had been untouchable, until we had been on opposite sides of white warding flames under Scottish skies, when Harry had made me strip and crawl and lick his boots, when he had held me down face to the ground, arse in the air, to brand my insides with hot iron right before I had dragged us both to a fiery death. I remembered Bella's shields enveloping me that day; that had been as close to safety as I had known in my entire life.

"Were you there that day?" I asked Lucius curiously as we walked together to the Manor, because I remembered that I had not seen him in the battle that followed.

"I was in Jamaica," he said reluctantly, never one to be unreserved unless overwhelmed.

"You found Agwe?"

I had assumed it had been Narcissa. I had assumed that Agwe had been a local healer. I should have known better. He was exceptional in his capacity as a healer.

"He had been the one who had told my father how to birth Tom," Lucius said tiredly, running his fingers through his thinning hair, in an unusual gesture of consternation. "I had found him then, angry and grieving, and had almost killed him. You must understand... It had been difficult. My father was dead. I had two babes I needed to protect. I had no idea where you were, though the Mark remained. I had heard conflicting tales of Godric's Hollow. The Ministry and the Aurors interrogated me near daily. I had no allies; most of the Death Eaters had either escaped the great purge, or been cast into Azkaban. I needed Severus to teach me Legilimency to protect myself, to protect my family that had not been carted off to Azkaban. I knew he had betrayed you. And Dumbledore offered me pardon in return for the diary. He suspected, even then. Then Agwe wrote to me, because he was on the execution row as many homosexuals were, and he was not ready to die. I arranged for his safety and repatriation. He owed me a life-debt."

He took a deep breath. "Severus insisted repeatedly, during the years when you were in...his care, that you would need the services of a discreet, exceptional healer at your behest for a prolonged period of time." I heard what he was not saying. I needed the services of a healer for the rest of my life. "After extensive deliberation, I decided that Agwe was the best candidate, removed as he was from our politics, beholden to me as he was by the life-debt. It was no easy task to force him to leave Jamaica, but he has taken to Montserrat...and to you. He thanked me once for bringing him to you. He says he has never met anyone quite as remarkable."

Lucius laughed gently at his own words. "Perhaps Severus was not the only healer to become inordinately fond of you, my lord."

"Severus is not a healer," I said flatly.

"No, but he was your healer," Lucius murmured, not meeting my gaze. "Nobody else could have...contained the damage as he did."

He left me to my musings.

As I walked to my study, I thought of what he had said, of Severus being my healer even when he was no healer.

Harry had me crucified once, reenacting the crux of the New Testament, though my Golgotha had been only a clearing in the Forbidden Forest. I remembered him still, pale but for his bleeding scar, as he ordered the Aurors to nail me to that wooden scaffolding. I had wavered in and out of consciousness, pain sending me to blackness and Harry's spell work reenervating me each time.

Then sweeping void had come rushing in, beyond mere magic, and it was Death itself, and I knew now what I had not known then, that a locket had broken to keep me alive. I had come back to my body, in grief beyond the pain of the present, mourning even if I knew not why, and Harry had been equally stricken.

Severus had managed to show up, as he often did, in the nick of time. I suspected that he had found a way to monitor my heart-beat. He had been the one who had taken me back to the garret that day.

"You should not let him take you to death's door!" He had yelled at me, purple of face, ugly and vicious, as he stitched me back together.

I had lost too much blood, past the replenishment that any potion could provide. So they had needed Harry's blood to keep me alive, again.

When I had come to myself after a week of numbing, pain-relieving drugs, I had seen no scars. Severus was no healer, but he had learned to heal me.

When they disallowed potions, he invented spells. When they wanted me to scar, he regenerated my cells so that I would scar less. When they branded me like livestock, he evened the pigmentation so that the markings were not visible except close to. When they wanted me to thrash in pain through the days after long nights of sport, he drugged me to sleep. When they unmoored my mind, he caught me in his snare of Legilimency, imprisoning me to a semblance of sanity. And yet, he had no power to protect me. He could only repair me once they had discarded me.

Harry Potter had been a force in himself. One day, drunken on grief after Lupin had died, he had come to me seeking vengeance. He had splayed me spread over a large table, letting my head and legs hang off, and I had been jarred out of my general acceptance of my fate when Hagrid's Giant trudged to me. I had begged, endlessly, for the Aurors, promising them any act they sought, if only to be spared the giant. I had not been spared. I suspected a horcrux had been sacrificed that night. And when I had woken again, bleeding heavily and barely lucid, Harry had threatened me with the giant again. I tended to beg the Aurors and the Minister, the Unspeakables and the rest, but I had done well so far in not letting myself beg Harry. That night, I begged him for the first time.

I had not expected it to fare worse, after that episode. I had been naive. Harry Potter hated me passionately. And when he had me under his thumb, he had started planning a long campaign of vengeance, only for him to get carried away every now and then, because what was done to me affected him, because my insanity affected him, because despite everything that I was, he was drawn to me.

He took revenge in every way he could. He forced me to wear intimate clothing that was meant for women before parading me about, before giving me unto cruel men who had become jaded by war and atrocities. And when he retrieved me, he would force me to recount every detail of how I had been despoiled and mocked, of how I had been shamed and frightened. Severus, who would skulk in after Harry had left, after the day's sport was done, would then bathe me and feed me, would then heal me and drug me to sleep.

Harry had been no homosexual. And indeed, he had rarely forced me into sexual acts with him. He preferred to watch while others desecrated me, while I was forced to debase myself. On the rare occasions he had sexually engaged with me, it had been heaven and hell both, the bond a comfort and the act a destruction.

The first time had been when Molly Weasley had been killed. I remembered that night well. He had come seeking vengeance to the garret. He had tied me down and he circumcised me, with a blunt knife, without an analgesic, and while I lay screaming, spared of death by a horcrux again, he took me in blood and tears, our souls touching in grace even as he squeezed my genitals to make me bleed more.

"Hush!" Severus had said, when he came by later, when I had nearly been blinded by pain and hoarse of throat, when I had been barely alive. "At least I talked him out of castration."

"Tom-" I had wept. "I wanted to save him from all this...I cannot-" Coherence was beyond me then. I had not been one to cling to notions about masculinity, but I felt _less_ then. "He will understand why I cannot continue. Please, Severus, please. You must kill me."

His hands had been effective and gentle, his expression dispassionate and focused, and when I had asked him once again to kill me, to put me out of this misery, he had told me that I needed to hold my mind better. The uncauterized blade and the unending sex led to an infection that laid me low for weeks. The fever touched my brain and my ravings turned even Severus green. He nursed me through it valiantly, never wavering. Potter, shaken, had come to me too, and often took me into his arms, confessing hatred and apology and desperate loss, quieting my ravings by pressing his wand into my hands, letting the magic be its own healing.

The first time the fever broke, Potter had backhanded me and told me that the Aurors would visit me later that day, and that I would regret it very much if I did not get a grip over my pelvic muscles and bladder by then. Even magic and desperation could only achieve thus far, and pain had lasting effects on involuntary movements, and I had regretted it very much, just as he had promised. By the end of it, I had come to believe that I was in Newburn once again, held down by thugs, and I was begging Wormtail to cleanse me.

Dumbledore had been visited me afterwards. He looked drawn and tired. He did me the courtesy of not asking me how I was, and I was quite glad for it, for I felt only a touch away from tears.

"I don't think you are doing Potter's sanity any favors," I muttered, when it became clear he meant to say nothing.

"Better his sanity than his life," Dumbledore said, ever pragmatic.

He might be a hypocrite, but he was an effectual one. The horcrux was separating from Harry. What he did to me had managed to achieve a separation that long years of Dumbledore's skillful magic had not.

It might have all gone as Dumbledore wanted, if he had not underestimated my hold over the boy. For all his hatred, I remained Harry's enduring obsession, the only one who could get him to act impulsively. As the war took more from him, he clung to me, finding joy in my breaking, finding joy in discovering new methods to shame me, to have me cry and beg.

From the beginning to the end, I had been his purpose, I had been his soul, and I had been his fate.

And that night, I had instigated him into impulsiveness, and they had paid the price for it.

\-----

Outside of wizarding London and the South of England, many in the little towns and villages demanded to know what had become of me.

There were stories, carried about the remaining stragglers in the Order, by Robin Hoods many, that I had manipulated the outcome to my tastes, that I was merely waiting for stability and peace before usurping power, that the current administration Tom and Narcissa had stitched together was a decoy for where ultimate power rested.

Bringing in the Weasleys had been an uphill task. Even taking one of their own and Hermione into Ministry custody had not brought the rest of them to toe the line. They carried on with their radio propaganda, and Fenrir tactlessly said that there must be many teenagers wanking every night to the colorful descriptors Fred and George Weasley employed to tell the stories of my captivity.

Reconciliation was necessary; the birth rate was well below replacement. Ours was a geriatric population. The number of working men and women had steadily gone down since the war with Grindelwald. The slow-bleeding war between the Ministry, the Order, and the Death Eaters, that had been ongoing for decades until 1981 when I fell, had done us no favors, killing early the able-bodied and the bright, the idealists and the ambitious.

 

"Hey there," Tom said, smiling though he looked weary. "I have been looking for you." He fell into step with me as we walked towards his quarters. Recently, I had begun considering them as our quarters. "Narcissa's job is stultifying. I need you to fuck me back to life."

"I am sure I can oblige," I said, laughing, feeling my blood warm to his words. His easy sexuality was the best antidote to my many fears, these days. I stripped us and took my place in our bed over him, and kissed him softly.

"Faster!" He demanded, gripping my waist.

"Imperio," I whispered against his lips. His limbs stilled and his mind began thrashing against mine, but I eased him through the first sparks of fear, into that transcendental state of bliss comparable only to the highest rushes of morphine. He was not Harry, with a borrowed resistance to the Imperius. And for all his mental defences, nobody had taught him to resist the curse when it meant seduction.

I had first heard of it from the fakirs of Afghanistan, on starry nights in the craggy mountains of the Northwestern provinces, where AK 47s and Killing Curses had buried empires. I had learned to walk through fields of poppies and pick the best seedpods, to extract opium from the latex, to extract morphine from opium. And then I had learned to manipulate the human mind to enable the process within, from converting the tyrosine in white blood cells to para-tyramine to dopamine to norlaudanosoline to reticuline to dehydroretinulinium to thebaine to neopinone to codeinone to codeine to morphine.

It was a gentle, gradual process, and I had not been capable of it after my mind had been given over to insanity, but I could again, restored as I was by Tom's craft.

"It is so intense!" He exclaimed, euphoric, clinging to me, awaiting his fate, luxuriating in that blissful lack of agency and purpose, as free as a newborn babe.

"Very good," I said, kissing his eyelids, focusing on every strand of spelled persuasion, releasing wave after wave of endorphins through his blood. He came in great spurts, and was still climaxing dry when I spread his legs and licked his essence off before sucking him in. He bucked, his mind a white blankness of blinding ecstasy, and he careened from high to high as I milked him of seed and strength. His limbs trembled and his eyes were tearful when I took him, every single nerve in him blown raw by waves of sensation. The sight undid me earlier than I expected it to, and I climaxed with his name on my lips.

Gently, I pulled him to me and cleaned him off, with my mouth again, lapping away the sweat and the seed from between his legs and arse, suckling on his cock and balls until the spell released him from its thrall, and his hands came shaking to pet me. He nodded off and I followed him.

When I woke the next morning, he was sitting up, watching me with mischief in his eyes.

"Teach me how to do that!" He demanded, kissing me fiercely. "You must teach me how to do that! Everything else you have taught me pales in comparison! This is _magic_."

"Lovely thing," I said, laughing, unresisting when he kissed me and fucked me.

"It can be dangerously addictive, done wrong," I explained later, winded by his ardor, regretting my age and reveling in his youth. "The synthesis is a delicate process. I practiced on monkeys for nearly a decade."

He looked at me in awe. I kissed him until I had wiped that silly adoration off his face.

"You did not have many sexual relationships before, did you?" He asked, curious, his usual unwillingness to encroach my privacy having retreated to endorphins. "What did you use this for?"

"I did not have any sexual relationship before. The purpose was not seduction. It was knowledge for its own sake," I said, shrugging. I knew many useless skills, having learned them because the process engaged me mentally.

"I bet you could make a Dementor yours with this," he said, stretching his limbs, grinning in satiation. "Please do it to me again! I wish I could show you how it felt!"

"You did, very thoroughly," I said, wincing as my limbs complained. "Such gerontophilia."

"You are devastatingly handsome," he confided affectionately, the charming man that he was. "Even when I did not have you in my bed, long ago, I tossed one off every night at the altar of your allure."

The thought of him as a teenager, returning from lessons with me, and masturbating wantonly, did something to my cock right then.

"Whatever did you get from my soul?" I wondered, not for the first time. So unlike me was he.

"Your cleverness, of course," he declared. "Everyone agrees. I have your wit and charm, and endless resourcefulness."

I supposed he did. He was brilliant and stubborn, and unceasingly charming. He had a dash of ruthlessness, though the jury was out on if it had been inheritance or Narcissa's parenting. That was where it ended. He was mellow and kind, and I had never heard him raise his voice. He led effortlessly, without hesitating to delegate and trust. I had no idea where that had come from. Perhaps Lucius made a better teacher of strategy than I had given him credit for. I liked to think Tom had inherited his resilience from me, but I had never managed resilience without resentment as he did.

\-----

I snuck out to Ollivander's the next day, leaving Tom a note so as not to have him fret over my safety.

I had felt cooped up in Wiltshire, in a way I did not in Montserrat with the wide open seas and the coconut groves, with Agwe listening to my ramblings on what life was to death and what death meant to life.

Diagon Alley was changed. I tried to recollect when I had last been here. Perhaps the late seventies? Was it 1976? Now it was a riotous display of materialism, as wizards and witches shopped, with every window display full of shiny, appealing magical artefacts beckoning the unwary to spend. I wondered if some enterprising soul had come across the works of Edward Bernays, or if this was an instinctive lesson. Knowing what I did of our kind, it must have been a lucky happenstance. Far be it from us to sit down and _think_ , living as we may, from day to day.

Then again, thinking rarely benefited the thinker, and those who thought lived their days in misery, for the conclusions were inescapable. The course of life for the great majority of men is meaningless and insignificant. Most of us are begotten and born to repeat once more the same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. They fight to survive, because of the inherent will-to-live that draws a baby out of a womb. And once survival is assured, boredom begins, and routine is all that is left until death. Yet, each of these fleeting forms, despite the lack of grand purpose or life by design, must pay for survival and boredom and routine with many deep sorrows, and finally with a bitter death, long feared and finally made manifest. It is for this reason that the sight of a corpse suddenly makes us serious. It is easier not to think, and around me were throngs that had perfected the art form of not engaging in thought.

Aggrieved for some inexplicable reason, I walked towards the wand maker's establishment. Ollivander's shop, at least, retained its old, unassuming facade.

"I had not expected you to come by so quickly," he remarked.

There was a young family there, with their boy being fitted for a wand. I was glad that I had pulled my cowl to obscure my face, and that I had shielded the telling signs of my magic. I waited for them to be done with their business. There were stories in these walls, as I thought of how I had claimed that first wand of yew. My heart ached still. I had worn the pouch at my waist this day, unsure if I could muster the courage to show it to Ollivander and yet desperate to see if anything could be done. I thought of Harry's wand, kin to mine as he had been kin to me. Destroyed in the same fire that had killed him, and its loss had struck me to the core. I wondered what had happened to the phoenix that had given us those wands.

I heard a discreet clearing of the throat. Oh, Ollivander was alone. He had closed the shop. I wondered what his customers might think; it was only eleven in the morning. I lowered my cowl.

"You sent for me," I said, hating the curiosity in his gaze when he noticed the rune carven on my face.

"I heard that you had come into possession of Albus's wand," he said softly. "An elder wand."

"It was the closest wand at a time when I needed one," I said uncomfortably. The wand and I were knitting together, despite my reluctance. Dueling helped conjoin wood to flesh. "Not one of yours, I take it?"

The wands he made had an unusual resonance to them, I had noticed over the years. They were gentle to their masters, subservient to the will of those that wielded them, completely loyal. This wand that had come to me from Dumbledore had a mind of its own, and I suspected its loyalty was easily won. Why else would it have leapt into my hands from Dumbledore's, when its master had been still alive? Ollivander was waiting patiently. I suppressed a sigh and handed the wand over to him. He made no move to take it, instead peering at it closely as if reading its secrets.

"An old wand," he murmured. "You ought to be careful."

"What should I be careful of?" I asked, uneasy. I had good instincts, and the wand had unsettled me since the day I had touched it. He shook his head. I resisted the urge to shake him until answers rattled out. Instead, I undid the pouch from the waist cord of my robes and gave it to him.

"The wand you made," I said, hating the catch in my voice. "Can you-" I took a deep breath and held his knowing gaze. "Can you see if anything can be done?"

He took the offering gently and moved to his desk. He placed the contents, the splintered wood and the phoenix feather, on his work surface.

"The brother wand is dead," he noted absently, prodding the remnants with his own wand. "They were linked in fate, you know. This wand, even if we mended it, will always grieve for its brother."

"It can be mended then!" I exclaimed, hearing only the possibility, bypassing the rest of his words.

"Cast a Reparo with the elder," he murmured, looking at me with pity.

"Reparo!" I shouted, greedy and desperate, wanting nothing more than that belonging I had had in this same shop decades ago when the wand of yew had come to me. Phoenix feather was encased in yew again, and the wand lay on his desk intact, as if it had never been broken. The elder wand clattered to the floor as I rushed towards my old wand, towards my dear companion of many years, my first claim on magic. I had clasped it tightly within my fingers, and it burned my palm. Betrayed, I let it drop to the desk again. It took a moment to realize that the wrenching sob came from my lungs. I clutched my burned hand to my chest and let Ollivander chivvy me to the only chair in the dusty room. He conjured water.

"No, please," I said, panicking. Somehow, he understood, and got rid of the conjured liquid, puttering away to come back with a glass of plain water. I let him take my hand in his and cast a basic healing spell.

"My healing spells are deplorable," he noted. "A side-effect of long-term exposure to wand cores, common to my profession."

"No matter, thank you," I said distracted, thinking of the betrayal still. "I heal fast."

"Yes, yes, I suppose you do," he said, not unkindly. I looked up at him, unheedful of my tears.

"The wand will not bow to a man who brought about its brother's end," he said quietly. "You should take the elder wand."

This time, when I picked up the elder, it clung to my resignation and tiredness, it licked its way to my magic's center, and it pressed its heavy blood toll against my heart. Old it was, older than anything I knew, and I wondered how many masters it had betrayed.

"I don't like it," I said uselessly, knowing well that it was too late. "What is it? You know more than you are saying."

"Only suspicions," he said absently. He conjured me a handkerchief and I took it to mop my face, eerily reminded of the time Dumbledore had done the same. "There has been many coincidences since you came to my shop. Spread over the years, no doubt, but I am an old man and time passes differently for me. That wand passed from Gellert to Albus, from Albus to you. Not long after your...capture, he came to me enquiring how to pass the wand from him to young Mr. Potter. He was convinced that the wand would be instrumental in their victory over you. I advised him that Mr. Potter's wand guarded him from you as only wandkin can. I wondered why he considered this wand as a weapon of magnitude. In the history of our kind, not many wands have been revered or feared separate from their wizards."

He looked at me with genuine sadness. "Indeed, I can think of only one wand that merits the description. A wand of elder, a wand older than time, a wand crafted of Death's will, a wand that has changed masters eagerly seeking power evermore, a wand that maddened the weak and betrayed the powerful. Have you ever read The Tales of Beedle the Bard?"

"No," I said, unsettled by his words. The wand in my hands had warmed to his tale, and I knew that this was no fancy of his. My instincts were correct. This wand accepted no mastery, for all that it served a master. "Can I have a new wand? Can I give it up?"

"To whom?" He questioned. "You are the most powerful man left alive. It will not leave you now, until someone more powerful comes along." Then he sighed, looking every year his age, and said quietly, "It may be a kind wand to you, than it has been to its earlier masters. There is elder mastered in your home already. Perhaps that might ease its thirst."

"Tom's wand?" I asked. He was the only one I knew that carried elder.

"One of Gregorovitch's," Ollivander said thoughtfully. "It is an unique combination, of elder and dragon heartstring, of fearlessness in the face of death and of unending loyalty. That suits him very well."

"Yes, it does," I said, smiling despite my grief, thinking of my dashing, fierce hero riding to war on a Thestral for me, saving me from Dumbledore, restoring my mind to me. I had not considered myself particularly inclined to swooning, but I supposed that I could grant myself the weakness.

"Keep the wand. I...I hope it takes to someone one day. I am glad it could be mended. It is a good wand." I covered my face to spare him the sight of my discomposure a second time. "It was a good wand to me."

"I know," he said quietly. "I cannot say it will ever serve another again. It was a wand made for greatness, just as its brother was." It hurt to hear him speak so.

Then he said in a lighter tone, "If you do want to be rid of the elder wand, find a wand that suits you."

"Whatever do you mean?" I asked, intrigued by the phrasing.

"Bring me the wood and the core that suits you," he said, rubbing his hands in anticipation. "I do not have any that will match you now. Oh, no, your magic has grown beyond a wand maker's skill. Just as Dumbledore had to continue using the elder because no other would serve him afterwards. He searched high and low for a replacement, and found none all his life. However, I suspect that you will find it yourself, should you choose to seek."

That Dumbledore had not found a true wand left me with little hope. He had been excellent at questing after the unknown, at uncovering secrets. How was I to succeed where he had not, on this matter? The elder blossomed dark over my magic.

"Where should I begin?" I said, determined to be rid of this curse.

"At the beginning," Ollivander said, smiling thinly. "At home."

 

\------

 

Our dueling in the evenings began to be a circus of sorts, attracting a wide audience, much to Lucius's dismay as this set back his reconstruction plans for the ruined arena. Werewolves and vampires, wizards and witches, and house-elves, watched us as we clashed.

The ruins matched the ruins of us, I thought, though I did not mention this to anyone. Bella and I were both ruins of imprisonment and torture, of a life on the run and in hiding, of causes extinguished and bodies broken. We circled each other, exhilarated by how we danced to the rhythm of curse and spell, at death's edge. While we had had an unspoken moratorium on the Killing Curse, there were many ways to reach death besides those two words, and both of us were well-versed in them.

Bella was still the better duelist. I had rapidly begun catching up, my instincts and form returning through practice, but I had an unhappy relationship with my wand even if wood and magic worked well together. I saw that I needed a quicker mind and still quicker reflexes if I were to win fairly in a duel with Bella. Usually, to save face, I bowed out with reactive wandless magic. She would yield, but cluck and tut and tease me saying that I was as an untaught child, spurting magic without control.

"I will teach you discipline, my lord," she promised each time, laughing in happiness at how I was recovering.

After the rebirth in the graveyard, I had not practiced dueling as I had once done, contenting myself with my skills. I wondered why. It must have been the loss of reason. Why would I have given up this thrilling dance?

I wondered what it might be like to duel Tom. I had taught him to duel once, but he was not the child I had taught anymore, was he? He had learned from Bella, he had waged war, and I wanted to duel him badly. So far, he had contented himself sitting on the ruined stones with the others, casting the pair of us disapproving glances when our spells skittered close to grave harm.

And one night, after I had disarmed Bella and ended our duel with wandless magic yet again, after the crowds had dispersed after their evening's entertainment, Tom lingered.

"The moon suits you, my love," I said cheerfully, coming to kiss him, high on adrenaline.

"Let me duel you?" He asked. "And don't cheat!"

"Oh, I wouldn't dare," I teased him, delighting in the color to his cheeks, delighting in the vexed face.

He slipped into an easy dueling stance, and I was taken back to his youth, when I had taught him. I cast first, and his counter-curse was rapid and fierce. Oh, this was no boy. I faced a man. I laughed, thrilled, and we slipped into the dance of the duel as if we had done it many times before. He was not as quick with his reflexes as Bella was, but he had tight control over every limb as he swerved and ducked, as he breached my shields and took ground, as he backed me into the ruins. A fine mind for strategy, he had. I grinned at him and flew up to land behind him, so that he was cornered instead.

"You will have to do better than that," he said, laughing, as he spun away like an eastern dervish, no doubt thanks to how much he loved dancing. I followed him and there were but a few paces between us as we renewed dueling. The moon cast him into many shades of love and lust and laughter, and I adored him as I fought him. I wanted him to release his caution, for he moved still mindful of harming me. I wanted him to fight me as he had fought for me.

"Crucio!" I cast, straight at him, and he Apparated away. When he appeared again, his eyes were dark and his purpose resolute as he began dueling in earnest. I met him shield to curse and curse to shield, as we volleyed in perpetual motion. Then his eyes narrowed, and he cast the spell that was utterly his in a way it had been no other's. "Legilimens!"

I would have kept anyone else out, no doubt, but he had made the doors he opened, and what was made would always recognize the maker. I threw him out gently, but it was too late, and his wand was at my throat, and my wand safely in his keeping.

"I yield," I said, laughing when his wand dug deeper at the base of my throat, as he turned me in his arms to properly kiss me. "That was cheating!"

"We agreed that you would not cheat, darling," he said, grinning, smug in victory, his eyes holding the dark thrill of conquest. "We said nothing about what I was permitted to do."

"Strip," he said, walking away from to the middle of the arena.

I raised my eyebrows at his decisive tones. I found it arousing nonetheless, to be addressed imperatively.

"I would not like to ask again," he continued.

"Did you cast privacy charms?" I asked, nervous, wondering what had gotten into him, disliking that I was deprived of wand.

"You are not required to talk," he said, conjuring a chair for himself and sitting down, a stern, pale statue in the moonlight. "Strip and _crawl_ to me."

"Tom-"

I began, disliking this intensely, wanting to leave, but scared to. Where would I leave to? He was all that I remained for. The thought of leaving panicked me even more than the thought of staying.

"You are trembling like a leaf in the wind," he remarked dispassionately, but my magic, reactionary as it had become, lashed out and reached him, desperate, and tasted only blazing love.

"Deep breaths," he commanded. "And then do as I say. You will like this less if you hesitate more."

I liked it not at all. Nevertheless, I made up my mind, and tried to take deep breaths, focusing on the moon above us, trying to restrain my magic from lashing out to test if there were charms of privacy. And yet, a part of me craved to trust him more than I already did. When had he endangered me? When had he ever let slip a single one of my secrets to another soul? Never.

Love, to many, was about bettering and redeeming the person that they loved, about showing them the error of their ways, shaming them and offering them ultimatums until they modified their behavior. His love for me had only ever been acceptance, loyalty, and protection.

So I stripped with clumsy movements. And I dropped to my knees and hands, and crawled to him nude under the moonlight in that vast deserted arena. His magic was fierce in its welcome when I reached his feet.

"Very good," he whispered, and ducked his head to press a kiss to my cheek, settling my nerves a touch.

I did not want his kindness then, though. I wanted his mastery. So I decided to pick up where he left off and pressed my mouth to the apex of his thighs. His hands came to my throat and squeezed in reprimand.

"I am not sure you have earned that, my beautiful slut," he said, smiling but firm. His endearment sent arousal sparking through my blood. And then I realized where this had come from.

"It has been a year," I breathed, looking up at his dear face, grateful that he remembered, and grateful that he had made me forget the passing of time.

"You are not required to talk," he said, and backhanded me. It was more the act than the force that curled viscerally into my blood. My breath caught as I reeled away.

"Lick my boots," he continued, trying to seem unaffected, though he gave it away with how his palms were clenched into fists on his spread knees. Gladly. I pressed many open-mouthed kisses to the clean, soft leather he wore. He must have cast cleansing and disinfecting spells right before, wordlessly.

"It is your birthday, isn't it? I have a gift for you."

His drawl had a tinge of relish to it, as if he had planned this awhile. I continued licking his shoes though, because I knew to stop would mean disobeying him, and right then I desired nothing more than to serve. "Put your hands to good use, won't you, my beautiful slut?" He crooned, rubbing behind my ears in tender affection. "Hold your arse open."

I hoped that he did not take my hesitance for fear. Shame pervaded me, raw and arousing, and I wondered the change that love made.

"Legilimens." It was more a request than a spell, and I opened wide to him in body and mind.

His want turned fierce when he saw the shame that became arousal, the fear that became trust, the surrender that was love.

His wand was at my arse, and I bucked into his hard body, startled at the sudden heat, strongly felt even if it left me unhurt when it dissipated.

"Well done," he murmured, focused on his magic, as he lifted me with a quick, decisive movement into his lap and sat me astride him.

"Have me," I breathed, needy and impatient with his games, but trusting that he would get to what I desired when he chose to.

"If you are so desperate, why don't you take my cock out and ride me?" He asked, sitting back, eyes full of mirth.

Oh, I was mortified but determined. My hands were trembling as I dug through his robes. His cock was warm and truthful as it leapt into my palm, even if he sat detached. He pressed his lips tight when I spat into my hand and coated his cock with a sheen of saliva, before lifting myself off to seat myself impaled. He caught my hips in alarm, when my breathing stuttered.

"Don't harm yourself," he chided, detachment slipping into genuine concern and consternation.

"Then you had best intervene," I murmured, shifting up and down, trying to get used to the sharp flare of that angle.

He gripped my hips tighter and held me down, until all of him was in me, hard and still. He was biting his lips to restrain himself as I clenched instinctively.

"You should see yourself," he informed me, dragging his filthy words out one by one over my heated skin. "A desperate, greedy, wanton slut, speared on cock and still craving more." I was shaking when his fingers scratched my lips lightly. "Should I fuck my seed into you and then leave you here tied open until you manage to free yourself? Perhaps I ought to tie you ankles over ears and leave you on our bed, plugged and gagged, until the next time I fancy a release." His fingers were at my cock, dabbing away pre-ejaculate so that he might taste it. He bent to mouth at my collarbone, and I felt his smile on my skin. "Perhaps I should-"

"Shut up," I told him, losing my patience in entirety, grabbing his shoulders and fucking myself on him, uncoordinated and desperate to see to my satisfaction. He laughed and kissed me and began thrusting, easy and controlled, letting me unravel to orgasm, and fucking me hard through it, leaving me nowhere to move away to, tightly held in his arms to his chest as I was, his mouth holding mine, his hands holding my hips, his belly warm and wet with my spend.

I barely noticed when he came, caught in that web of sensation. He moved away from my kiss and conjured a mirror.

"I can't see a bloody thing," I told him, wondering what he wanted next, too tired to speculate.

Obligingly, he conjured one of his warm balls of light that hovered over us. There was love in his eyes as he pulled me onto his lap sideways, and lifted my left leg over his shoulder with one hand, splaying me obscenely open. He braced my back against his chest with his other hand. The ball of light and his conjured mirror hopped down between my legs, to the opening of my body.

"What-" I asked, embarrassed and yet curious as to this new perversion.

"Open your arse," he asked. "My hands are occupied. Open wide."

The mirror was magnified. I was glad for the clouds that covered the moonlight, offering my shame the cloak of darkness. My eyes were fixed on the mirror as I obeyed him. My palms were unnaturally big due to the magnification. And between them, despoiled and open, was a ring of dark flesh. My breath caught in my throat when I realized what was different. He bit my ear when I let my fingers explore, suppressing my joy in the fear it was only a glamour. The raised tissue of the brand was gone. The brand was gone. I surged up to kiss Tom.

"Happy birthday," he said shyly, sweetly, and let me cling to him, and offered only solace when I crashed.

"I have been with Severus everyday," he said later, when we were in our bed. His fingers were dancing scattered over my arm. I was grinning like a loon, giddy in my freedom. He had removed the one remnant of my past that I had not made terms with. "He taught me how to craft this spell."

"Didn't you need blood?" I asked, knowing well how these spells were constructed.

"Your blood is everywhere in Hogwarts," he said apologetically. That made sense.

"Didn't you need his blood?" I asked, and then I realized the inanity of my question.

"His blood is your blood," Tom pointed out, not mocking me for the glaring stupidity. Wandkin, Ollivander had called us. We had been kin by blood too.

"Thank you," I told Tom.

I was free and I was his, and the two states coexisted without contradiction somehow.

\-----

"What is that?" Tom asked me, when he saw me fiddling with the counter.

"A scintillation counter," I said, distracted, as I set it up with shielding and anti-coincidence. "I am going to measure the age of my wand."

Since he looked as if he understood nothing of what I said, I explained, "Radio-carbon dating can be used to measure the age of substances that contain significant organic material, specifically carbon. Wandwood retains high level of carbon. Radio-carbon, an isotope of carbon, decays at a certain rate, with a half life of five thousand years, and is present in plants at the same ratio that it is in the atmosphere that the plants lived in, due to photosynthesis. It, therefore, aids us to find the age of substances that once exchanged carbon with the atmosphere, such as wood."

"You are brilliant," he said, looking at me as he had when he had been fourteen, when I had warped a staged release of potential energy to kinetic energy using a force-field.

"Merely lucky to be partially educated among the ignorant," I said, jesting, and did not mind at all when he slapped my arse for that remark.

An owl flew in then. He raised his eyebrows when it sought me. I received correspondence only from Agwe, and usually via the Floo.

"Hermione Granger," I said, surprised, when I saw the name on the envelope.

"She is under house arrest at the Weasley home," Tom remarked, curious and wary, swiping his wand over the envelope to detect harm subtle or overt.

I was proud of him and I cherished his protectiveness.

It was only a letter. She sought an audience with me. There was a footnote in Severus's familiar script vouching for her. Oh, would I never be rid of him! He hated me and betrayed me, and then loved me and saved me, and then worked with Tom to free me of my horrors.

\------

Bella was by my side when I reached the Weasley home.

"The Burrow," she informed. Then she looked curious and wondered, "Is it because they consider themselves a warren?"

There were Aurors posted on duty at the fence. They gave way when Bella showed them her wand. The inside was cosy chaos, though deprived of a lady of the household.

I had cried for Molly Weasley, when Harry had taken it out on me. I had cried for Ginerva too, having paid the price during the first night I had been in his care.

"Bellatrix!" It was Andromeda.

She was wide of hips and her face was round, but her eyes were as sharp and furious as I remembered. In her arms was a young child. A Metamorphagus. Oh, her daughter was one, hadn't she? Her daughter was imprisoned, awaiting trial. She had confessed to torturing Draco, shielding her mother. That girl, Narcissa had commented, had not a single cruel bone in her body. However, she meant to die for Andromeda, and there was little to be done about it.

"Protecting your lord?" Andromeda mocked, shifting the babe to the other hip.

Others petered in, Weasley men, unarmed, but resentful. There was the woman I had come to see too, and her face was stamped by grief.

"You were of little use when he was squealing like a pig for three years straight." She looked at me then. "Do you still bawl every night? Do you still beg Harry to hold you? Do you still suck Snape off so that he heals you?"

"My lord," Bella murmured, raising her wand, green lighting its tip.

I reached out to clasp her wrist loosely, shaking my head at her.

Andromeda took a deep breath and went in for the kill. "When you spread your legs for Tom, does he call you a whore for the brand in your arse? Tell me, Lord Voldemort, does my frigid bitch of a sister kennel you with the werewolves now?"

"Crucio!"

Andromeda was not Bella's sister in only name. She swerved from the curse easily, and it ricocheted off on the walls, leaving a scorch mark.

"I came to speak with Mrs. Weasley," I said mildly. "Andromeda, your grandson is alive because of Narcissa. Have a care."

"Thank you for coming," Hermione stepped forward, face resolute despite the concern of her family. There was a swell to her belly that had not been there when her husband and she had cornered me in the Headmaster's office. "I cannot leave the house," she continued, twisting her hands in anxiety.

"Bella, my dear, would you mind keeping an eye on this motley assortment, while I converse with Mrs. Weasley?" I looked between Andromeda and her. It would not do. I stunned Andromeda and sent the baby flying into the nearest Weasley's arms.

"Best to not escalate that situation," I said, and the Weasleys nodded grimly at that.

Hermione led me to her bedroom and closed the door behind us. There was only one chair at the desk. I moved to the window sill and offered her the chair. There was a photograph of the three of them on the wall. Harry's innocent expression morphed into knowing, into grief, into hatred, when he saw me.

"I am very sorry for what Harry did," she blurted out, her eyes red as if she had cried a great deal. "He was...he was never like that with anyone else. He is gone." She was crying in earnest then, but conjured herself a handkerchief and continued, "He is gone, but I wanted to apologize on his behalf. I don't know what happened. He was not like that with anyone else."

"Mrs. Weasley," I said tiredly, alarmed by her crying, wanting no part of her grief, wanting no part of her apology on a dead man's behalf. "His deeds are not your responsibility."

"Did Dumbledore know?" She asked, in a small voice.

I disliked that she thought of those horrors, of my body in their clutches. She would remember when the gossiping others had forgotten and had moved to newer scandals. She would remember for the rest of her life. Our greatest sufferings do not lie in the present, as intuitive representations or immediate feeling, but rather in reason, as abstract concepts, tormenting thoughts. Intelligence was suffering, and she would suffer. Insanity had ingrained a measure of sympathy in me, for I remembered the torment well. For a moment, I was tempted to lie that Dumbledore must not have known, to give her this last relief that at least one of her heroes was as she wanted him to be.

"Yes," I admitted. "He had his reasons to encourage Mr. Potter down that path."

"Harry left everything to you," she continued, disconsolate but determined. She was a remarkable woman. "He had drawn up the will when he was seventeen. He appointed me the executor. He left everything to you."

"You will be placed on probation, most likely," I told her. "Take what he had. Make something of your life. He would want that too. Maybe build a memorial for him. There is already one for his parents in their village. He was a hero for many, regardless of what he was to me."

"What was he to you?" She asked, looking wretched, as the horrors that had been done to me had been her nightmares. Why did it bother her? She had no reason to sympathize with me.

"He was my fate," I said, having made my peace with it months ago. 

I remembered him still, looking down at me as I wept and screamed when they unleashed the dogs. Cornelius had flinched. The Aurors had flinched. Birds had flown away from the treetops, frightened by my broken voice. Harry had not flinched. He had held my gaze as long as I stayed cognizant. 

I remembered him still, coming to me that night, after Severus had patched me up. It was unlike me to converse voluntarily with him, but I had myself worn away and there was little of my self left then. 

"Why?" I had asked. 

"I thought you were an alien," he had replied. His voice had been tearful and earnest, and his magic had been warm. When he had knelt by my cot and placed his open palm over my forehead, it had soothed me. "I didn't think-" 

"There isn't a vein in me you haven't torn," I had confessed, and had hated that I was comforted by his touch. The horcrux in him had been generous too, trickling soft reassurances into our bond. In my darkest moments, I wondered what we could have been, if only we had not been this. He had sighed and placed his wand on my breast, as he often had, and I had wondered if he meant to whisper words of healing or torment. It had varied. _Brothers_ , Ollivander had said. 

"Tell me more," Harry had asked, easily gathering me into his hands, pulling me to his lap, pressing my back to his torso. His fingers dragged over my chest and scratched my nipples. He had a fascination with them. I was surprised that they had not been torn from my body, with the acts he had subjected them to. Severus had become very good at patching me up, as any mother had patched up a child's broken doll. I had become that; Harry's doll. 

"What do you want me to say?" I had asked, and hated the abject surrender and fear in my voice. 

"Would you have done this to me, if you had won?" 

"No." 

"Would you now?" 

"No," I had answered tiredly, and hated the truth. 

"I know," Harry had told me quietly, and kissed my ear. "You are doing well, you know," he had continued in the darkness. His hands had been at my thighs, spreading them. His cock had nestled into my arse. The connection between us had bloomed in happiness, in ecstasy, and I had felt his tears on my back. My pains and aches had fled for that moment's grace, and I had been free even if I had been a prisoner in the chains of us. 

"I have had you fucked by animals. I have seen you cry and kneel, crawl and beg. I have dressed you up in the most humiliating costumes. I have seen you shit and piss yourself. And still...and still, it is awful that I am complete only when I fuck you," he had muttered, though still in a good mood. I had been grateful for that, I remembered, for I had been too frayed to be subjected to his temper right then. "Tell me, _Tom_. Imperio! Tell me what you feel."

"I fear you."

"Good. You are doing so well."

"You survived," Hermione noted, resentful in her grief, ungrudging in her sympathy. Her words dragged me back to the present.

"It was little to do with me. I was saved," I said truthfully.

She laughed then. She had a nice laugh, full and warm. She said quietly, "You survived. I don't know why Dumbledore let it go on. I don't know why Harry did this. I do know that you were resourceful until the end. I was there, you know, when we warded Scotland. It was the first time I had seen you after that day in Malfoy Manor. That night in Scotland, when Harry tied you to a ward stone, when he opened your clothes and cut your navel, when he stole your blood, I wondered what had happened to burn the fight out of you. Then after the casting, when I saw his atrocities upon you, I thought of the Nuremberg trials, of what the Nazis had done in the name of some purpose that they believed in, of what the Allies had done to enact victor's justice in the guise of a fair court, and I ran to Dumbledore imploring him to intervene. He did not. Snape had to stop me from running into your midst. Looking back, he knew you were goading Harry into something, even when you had no power. And you saved yourself and killed your tormentor. You survived." She bit her lips and nodded firmly. "You seem as if you have recovered. I respect you for that."

"Some of your friends will get a death sentence," I told her, urged to honesty by her admission, feeling a sense of unlooked for closure at her words.

"I know," she said weakly, crying again.

"Your husband will get the death sentence," I said gently.

I knew it was true. He had killed many. Narcissa's mercy, while it extended to her sister, was unlikely to affect anyone else. She was rocking herself back and forth. I felt a shred of sympathy for her, remembering how desperately I had wanted to protect Tom.

"You must survive, just as I did," I told her, looking at her belly. "The child needs you."

"The Weasleys will-"

"No, no," I told her, walking to her.

I bent to take her small hands in mine, waited until she looked up, and said quietly the last truth I was willing to share with her, "I needed my mother. And Harry needed his."

Tom was the man I loved because of Narcissa.

"You will live for your child."

She nodded, somehow relieved at the permission I gave her to live, for the sake of her child, setting aside her survivor's guilt. In the end, despite intelligence and resourcefulness, she was only human.

"Will you be in London for the trials?" She asked, staring at my fingers.

"Only for Severus's," I admitted.

I had made up my mind on that. The wretched man would not let me live in peace, with his constant meddling in my life. He had taken so much. He had given so much. I was determined to rid myself of him, after the trial. I would testify and we could go our separate ways, free of each other finally.

"I was helping him brew potions, during those years," she confessed. "I did not understand why he tweaked his healing potions to work in subtler ways, in more long-lasting ways, focusing on cell regeneration than on repair. I thought it had been for the soldiers, since he made them in large vats."

"I needed every single vat, thrice a day," I assured her, unsurprised at her admission. He was an enigma wrought of hate and love and bloody courage. I helped her up from the chair.

"Is that Dumbledore's wand?" She asked, curiously, when she saw me use it to pull the chair back to the desk. "I think he meant for Harry to have it."

"His wish came true. This is as close to Mr. Potter as it can get now," I said wryly, though it made her flinch.

"You don't want to see his estate, what he left to you?" She asked tremulously.

"No," I said firmly.

"Is there anything I can do to make amends on Harry's behalf?" She asked.

"Write to me," I asked her, before I opened the door. "Write to me when the child is born. Let me know that you chose to survive."

I cast one last glance at the photograph on the wall, of the three of them, and Harry's gaze was full of grief and anger still.

I closed the door behind me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (apologies - I ran out of space in the footnotes)
> 
> 1\. Voldemort's explorations into the force and causality arguments on magic is heavily influenced on works by Wittgenstien, Schonpaeur, Hume and Russell.  
> 2\. Nuremberg Trials - considered in some ethics circles to be victor's justice  
> 3\. Radio-carbon (c14) - Used to date relics these days.  
> 4\. Morphine - biosynthesis of morphine in blood cells is an active area of research.  
> 5\. Brown Sugar - lyrics referring to slavery of the chattel/ livestock sort, about how slaves are still inexplicably attractive to their captors.  
> 6\. Edward Bernays - commercialized Freud in social manipulation through PR (The Power of Spin)  
> 7\. Hermione's interaction is modeled on Sino-Japanese citizenry interactions post WWII  
> 8\. Male homosexuality in Jamaica is still illegal under law.


	5. Maghdim

  
My mornings were for writing, my afternoons for editing with Bella, and then we went out to the arena for our daily dueling circus. I thought of Rome, of oiled gladiators. I suspected that we were happier than those warriors to step into our coliseum. While Bella had always loved an audience, making a spectacle of herself, it had been a learned response for me. I remembered that I had been a shy boy once, that I had kept to myself. Then I had seen how crowd pleasing led to successful investments, collaborations and alliances.

"Well fought," Fenrir said, catching up to me with his loping strides. He smelled of stale blood and death.

"Only a rabbit," he assured me, unoffended, laughing when he felt my magic touch him in curiosity.

Dark Creatures tended to be more sympathetic to my unruly reactionary magic than Bella or Agwe was. They too had instinctive and difficult to control urges.

Bella called me undisciplined. Agwe called me self-destructive. He had shown me several moving charts on how my nerves inflamed and did not return to their original state each time I lashed out in reaction, channeling magic from the surround. He made me sound as if I were a broken FM receiver. Just as water and air, magic from different sources were not the same. Some, in fact, were more polluted or toxic than the others. I wondered if it was as mineral poisoning.

"Bella says you are writing a book on magic," he said. I wondered why he seemed curious. I had never in our long acquaintance seen him crack open a book.

"It is not a book on the theory or practice of magic," I said.

That ought to have nipped his interest in the bud. Instead, he waited patiently, shortening his strides to match mine. In another time, we would have each given the other no allowances or mercies, keen as we were to prove superiority over each other. I found it charming that they interacted with me as equals, after they had seen I too was made of flesh and fears, of blood and tears.

"It is a speculative book on what magic is," I said, and winced, since it sounded a pretentious overreach.

I had never doubted my intelligence, but after raking through the literature of our kind, in many languages, I had not found a single work that had delved into what magic itself be, and I wondered if I was not taking on the impossible.

Tom, darling that he was, said it would be nobody else, if it were not me. Nevertheless, this endeavor had made me face the limits of my intelligence, my knowledge; I was grateful for reason returned everyday, but nevermore than when I attempted to build a framework of logic as Aristotle and Plato once had, a framework of magical logic.

It would not be complete within my lifetime, but that was the point. I wanted to leave a legacy for tomorrow, for the next generation to pick up where I had to end. I wanted continuity of thought. I wanted to change the way this world was built on action and instinct, to teach them to ask _why_  and  _how_.

"Magic is in the blood, isn't it?" Fenrir asked, wondering what I was going on about. He was humoring me.

"Is it?" I asked. "What of the wand woods, then? Perhaps you will say that is because plants are living organisms too. Then, what of stone? What of time-travel and port-keys?"

And my own magic; my magic was... _empathetic_ , for the lack of a better term. It tasted the magic of others, of the ambient surround, of stone and wood. I did not know if it was an anomaly. It must be. I had never met anyone whose magic behaved so. My long exposure to the Castle's magic, when I had been a captive there, had done great damage to the barriers of impermeability I had learned before, to keep myself separate from the world. Perhaps there had been snake blood once in my family, by ritual or lust. Snake skins were permeable, to protect them from the environment and to aid them to obtain sustenance from the environment.

"Baby werewolves bite more than flesh. They eat magic, draining their victims, before they lose their milk-teeth," Fenrir said slowly. "Why does that happen?"

"Why, indeed?" I said happily, glad that he had asked the only question that mattered. "Can I monitor an infant werewolf? I am curious to study the phenomenon."

"Tom will have my head," he muttered, but he did not say no.

Oh, they had made werewolves bite me, seeing some primal justice in making a Creature of me. Unfortunately, my magic repelled any efforts to turn me. It had been one of those occasions when I had wondered why. Was it a question of magical volume, of intent, of loyalty? What was magic?

"If anyone can find out, it is you," Fenrir said, uncomfortable at complimenting anyone sincerely. "I will bring you one of the babies next time."

After he took off to the Apparation point, I meandered back along the garden path. Everything was touched by frost and bleak winter. I tugged my cloak about me tighter; only a week more before Severus's trial, before we could head back to Montserrat.

I had been thinking of Ollivander's words. Start at the beginning, he had said. Start at home. He had also said that there was elder mastered in my home. Did he mean Tom? Tom was my home. Tom's home was in Montserrat, and it had been this Manor before.

I inhaled deeply, and winter unfurled its mark on my magic, crisp and moonless, barren and white. There was the sound of laughter and merrymaking from the Manor. Dinner-time. Tom had not pressed me after a few times in the beginning to participate. My appetite had never been sturdy, but imprisonment had ruined my gastrointestinal physiology to the point where I had become careful as to what and when I ate. And I had disliked it when eating at Narcissa's table, where there were many curious gazes when I applied caution. I preferred having a house-elf bring dinner to me later, or making a detour to the kitchens on my way back from dueling practice.

A long line of velvet black was moving away from the servant's entrance as I climbed the path. I frowned. The fabric was too rich for any servant. And I knew there were no servants but for the house elves. I set off after them.

Narcissa. Her stride was unmistakeable. She was clad from head to toe in black, and on her face was a Venetian masque, hiding her easily recognized features. Concerned, I disillusioned myself and followed her.

Tracking her through her Apparition was difficult, but the Mark came handy at times, and I could coarsely triangulate her whereabouts to a small village. Ottery St. Catchpole, my location charm showed me. Devon. What was she doing in Devon at midnight?

She walked briskly to a playground. There, awaiting her, was her sister.

"If it isn't you in the flesh, Cissy darling," Andromeda crooned, looking very much like their other sister.

She had a wand on her, I felt, even if she had not raised it. Where had she got one? Wasn't she under house-arrest?

"Nymphadora will be executed at dawn," Narcissa said urgently. Though her posture gave nothing away, the emotion in her voice was stark, and her sister frowned. "Please, Andy, you must surrender. She has done nothing wrong. She is a good girl. And her son needs her."

"Don't you want my daughter for your son?" Andromeda demanded, striding closer; Narcissa remained where she was, though she flinched when her sister reached to grab her masque.

"Lovely to see your face again, Cissy," Andromeda murmured, though there was only hatred in her.

"Andy, please, you must save the girl," Narcissa continued, ignoring her discomfort at the bright knowing in her sister's eyes.  
  
"The girl reminds me of you, sweetheart. Very dutiful, loyal, and dumb," Andromeda said. "You were the Black virgin sacrifice, to save our family's grace that Bella and I had ruined. And she can be the sacrifice of her generation, falling to ensure that I fight another day. I cannot switch places, my sweet sister. She would be useless at a life of rebellion."

"I shall have her buried beside Mr. Lupin, then," Narcissa said sharply, pulling away from her mad sister. Her wand was in her hands and she had cast a shield charm. She was blinded by familial bonds, but she was not a fool. Andromeda's curse struck her shield and she spun away.

"Go back and await your trial, sister," Narcissa shouted, sending dark flames to cover her retreat as she ran out of the playground, towards the Apparation point.

The Weasleys and their friend that did dramatic, colourful narrations of my imprisonment were waiting at the end of the road, where the town gave way to forest.

Dark flames rose out of their wands, dancing out in sinusoidal waves, surrounding the sisters in a half-circle, cutting away the escape point. Andromeda meant to kill her sister and die with her, unless she knew how to tame the fire. I doubted it. Very few knew how to control these fires, particularly when they had been cast by another. At the same time, Andromeda was a Black, and I was sure that their parents had taught them a great many spells dark and forbidden.

I rushed towards the wizards, trusting that Narcissa could hold her own while I subdued them.

"I always thought it would be Bella," Andromeda said, circling her sister like a wolf that had scented blood. "Instead, it was you, Cissy. You saved that bastard. You kept him alive. You sheltered him. Did your cunt finally moisten when he squealed for his mother?"

"He doesn't have a mother," Narcissa said, engaging her; she may not have dueled Andromeda in ages, but she had seen Bella duel. She knew how they responded to words.

"No, he clawed his bloody way out of her womb and killed her, didn't he?" Andromeda said, spitting rage and disgust. "Does he suckle at your teats now?"

I was uncomfortable at her words. Somehow, I preferred her throwback references to my imprisonment to this.

"Avada Kedarva," Narcissa shouted, and Andromeda barely had time to leap away. The earth cracked under her feet.

"Cissy!" Andromeda said, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. "Our sister has been teaching you to play." She laughed, throwing her head back, as wild as Medea when assassinating Glyce, and she cast her own killing curse. Narcissa's face was pale in the green light. She swerved away and cast, but I saw her fingers tremble. I ran towards the fire.

"Andy!"

It was the father of the Weasley clan. He was in his night-clothes, unarmed. There were Aurors with him. And behind them I saw the inhabitants of this sleepy hollow, woken by the ruckus.

Andromeda cast the Killing Curse again. Narcissa ran, and it hit the flames, turning them darker, imbuing them with intent, and they raced towards her. There was another figure across them, on a game-leg. Moody. While he had never tormented me emotionally or sexually, he had caused me great physical pain on the occasions he had been in charge of me. Narcissa would die. I took a deep breath and leapt off the ground, into flight, over the flames that licked at my shoes, and landed between the sisters, keeping an eye on Moody.

"My lord!" Narcissa exclaimed, frightened for me. She cast her killing curse again, on her sister, running sideways so that she had a direct line of sight. The flames had caught up to her, licking her cloak, rushing up the fine length of silk. She slipped off the cloak, and met her sister in battle.

I batted away Moody's first curse. It was only a test, I knew. He was testing my defenses. Before I met him in duel, I needed to claim the flames. I stretched my magic along the elder wand, coaxing the flames to me, coaxing them into submission by wile and skill. It was a laborious task, but the wand delighted in it. It liked eating magic and the flames were powerful sorcery. I felt the subdued spell rise into the wand, rise into my skin, until it was mastered.

Andromeda's Killing Curse warmed my back, cut off only by her sister's summoning of the radio narrator. He burned as he was pulled through the flames, right between the curse and my body, and he fell at my feet dead.

"Lee!" I heard someone shout. I danced away from Moody's Killing Curse, fighting myself to a vantage point from where I could duel him without losing track of Narcissa. I saw what he was trying to do, to get me to back towards the flames. I knew that he would cast ownership over the flames once I was close enough. And they would respond to him better, since they had initially been cast by his allies.

"Fight me!" Narcissa screamed, cursing her sister, and they were mad both, fighting nail and tooth, as they roared spells and spewed hatred.

There were the twin Weasleys, grieving for their fallen friend, rushing towards me. The wand seared in anticipation of a kill. I cast disarming and bone-shattering spells in quick succession, and their screams were bracing in the cold night. The wand wanted to kill, burning my hand as it rebelled against my refusal. I wanted to keep my reason. And I feared that killing with elder might have repercussions on my delicate mental state.

Yielding ground to Moody steadily, calculating the distances between us, I turned to face the sisters. Narcissa was on her knees, disarmed, and her sister was advancing with a leer.

"My pretty sister," she said. "Would you like to say goodbye to your lord?"

Oh, this had gone on enough. I pulled through the mark, and Narcissa flew to me. I caught her before she fell.

"Mind the flames," I shouted at her.

When I met Andromeda in a duel, she was vicious and desperate, tasting that death was near, expending magic as if it were only air, sparing nothing, and her face was haloed in green and red by the Unforgivables she cast. She did not waste breath on taunting me, seeing that I would not be distracted. Moody met us with his curses. I was glad that I dueled Bella every night, and my reflexes were on point as I met them curse for curse. Andromeda was mad and Moody was deliberate. I knew I ought to take out Andromeda first, given her unpredictability. Narcissa had crawled over to the fallen Weasleys, and stolen a wand. I watched her set face as she fought the flames. The stolen wand was not conducive to her. I took a deep breath and commanded the flames, into a serpent, and they coiled down towards Andromeda, and she screamed when they claimed her.

Moody's Cruciatus caught me just as his Killing Curse whipped past my ear. Ignoring the ringing echo, I focused through my thrashing, into flight, and cast at him mid-air, killing him, before falling to the ground, thankfully buffeted by the weak cushioning spell Narcissa shot.

"Are you all right?" She asked, breathless, as she rushed to my side, keeping her wand on the twin brothers.

"Quite," I murmured. "Now watch the wand movements to control the fire, Narcissa. If you must go seeking mad pyromaniac relatives, at least do me the courtesy of learning how to control fire."

I taught her how to control the flames patiently, as the Aurors finally approached and dragged the corpses away. Only Moody's and Lee's. Andromeda's had been consumed by the flames. I wondered when had been the last time a Black had been buried. Two remained to take custody of the brothers. Arthur Weasley lingered, guarded by Aurors, and he looked deeply pained. I helped Narcissa stand up, since she had twisted her ankle and continued dueling, and the pain hit her in the aftermath.

"Mrs. Malfoy," Arthur said wretchedly.

"Where is the boy?" Narcissa asked, clinging to my arm, and I saw that she was close to tears. "Where is her grandson?"

Arthur sighed before saying, "She drowned him in the bath."

"I see," Narcissa said, refusing to be weak, and I admired her for it, seeing Tom in her for the umpteenth time. When I had been young, I had envied the stiff-lipped upper class, who faced their troubles without a flinch. It was breeding more than it was courage.

"Nymphadora is to be executed at five in the morning," she continued briskly. "I shall make arrangements for the baby and her to be interred beside Mr. Lupin." Then she took a deep breath and said, "I shan't let her hear of these events."

Bella and she were the last of their family, just as Tom was the last of his. How many families had our war wiped out of being?

When we returned to the Manor, everyone had retired, unaware of the tidings. I wondered how she would break the news to Bella. I wondered what I would tell Tom. The truth, I decided. He would not be pleased that I had run after Narcissa without informing him, but that was understandable and I did not wish to make excuses.

Narcissa and Lucius kept separate quarters. While they maintained the facade of their marriage for the public, I did not think they had much to do with each other anymore. I led her to where I had seen her retreat to after dinners.

"Andy taught me to braid my hair," she whispered, as we walked quietly past the suits of armor and the portraits on the walls. I saw her to her door.

"Shall I send you Dreamless sleep?" I offered.

Tom kept them in reserve for me in our medicine cabinet, even if Agwe had been slowly weaning me away from them, substituting them with weed, saying one was less troublesome in the long run than the other.

"Hold me?" She asked, imperious despite the plea on her face.

"I will wake Tom," I offered, uncomfortable. She shook her head, and she was crying, and she buried her face in the front of robes. I cast a sleeping spell on her and summoned the house-elves, and charged them to carry her to her bed.

I could not remember the last time I had been in physical contact with a woman, outside of duels and polite societal gestures. I had generally avoided touch, but even when I had been forced to bear it, it had been that of men. I remembered Andromeda's taunting in mortification. It made me more unsettled than memories of my imprisonment still.

"Where have you been?" Tom asked sleepily, shifting so that I may slip into the warm spot where he had been. His thoughtfulness was enchanting.

"Narcissa had the bright idea of trying to reason with her sister."

"Which one?" His palm was heavy on my breast. "Neither of them are reasonable."

"Andromeda."

Tom sat up, worried, sleep fast fading from him.

"Cast your favorite spell," I asked. "It will be easier that way."

He was shaken and pensive when he cut off the spell.

"Thank you for saving her," was his first statement. Then he ran his fingers through his hair and said, "I thought I had seen the worst of what humans can do to each other. The baby was only a few months old - poor thing. I heard that it loved Andromeda so much that it kept changing its hair to match hers." He took a deep inhale and pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. "Are you all right?" He asked.

"You are not angry?" I wondered. He did not seem to be.

"You are the most powerful wizard I know. I trust you to keep yourself safe, even if I panic when I cannot find you." He smiled at me, in chagrin. "I know that it is not comparable, but those years were difficult for me. And the months that followed, I have fretted so over your recovery. Each time Agwe uses terms like permanence, it breaks my heart. If I could give myself for restoring you, I gladly would, any day."

I dragged him atop me, warmed by his words, and confessed, "I don't mind the price, Tom. If I were asked to choose my life, I would choose this one still, for it brought me into your keeping and there is nowhere else I wish to be."

"I know," he murmured, kissing my jaw. "It humbles me. I don't know what I did, but I own you now, and I shan't change that."

 _Own_. As I held him, I wondered if he fathomed that he was my sole measure of grace.

\-----

As we prepared to leave for the trial, I watched Tom in the sunlight, strong and beloved.

"What is on your mind?" He wondered, rifling through the sheaves of his correspondence to look up the details of the location.

"Andromeda said something about my motherlessness," I mused, trying to pinpoint why it unsettled me when nothing else had. "I realize I know nothing of women."

He raised his eyebrows but stopped what he was doing and came to kneel before me.

"Do you want a sexual experience with a woman?" He queried.

He looked pained, I could see, but he was supportive. I dragged him for a kiss and shook my head. Then, seeing the silliness of it all, and how it was not worth shadowing his happiness or mine, I confessed, "It made me curious as to what a maternal experience is."

His gaze brightened, and his smile was soft in understanding.

"I don't have many memories before the age of eight or ten," he said, considering. "However, I can share my experiences gladly, if you wish."

He brought his wand to his head and extracting a long curl of silver memory, and instead of dropping into a container, he bent over me and let it trickle into my skin, effortless and assured in his movements.

No other man had conquered the mind arts so well. Certainly, no other man had conquered my mind so well.

Once the last of the memory had sunken into my skin, I closed my eyes.

He was a boy of ten, swinging his legs restlessly, while Narcissa combed his hair. He was six, and she was teaching him to play the English horn. He was twelve, and she was tutoring him in Runes. He was sixteen, and she was teasing him about his flings. He was an infant, suckling at her breast. He was eight, and she knelt before him, cleaning a minor wound on his kneecap. He was six again, in her arms, as she sang to him softly after a nightmare.

"Mummy," the little boy whispered, burying his face in her chest, soothed by her easy strokes along his thin back, soothed by her even voice raised in song.

"You should call me Narcissa," she said sadly, firmly, and pressed a kiss to his little forehead.

"Draco calls you Mummy," the child said, distressed.

"I am your mother," she said fiercely, meaning every word. "You will call me Narcissa."

And there was one final memory, of Narcissa weeping in Tom's arms, as they stood by a bier.

"To have lost your only son!" A well-meaning cousin said, offering her condolences.

Narcissa stiffened, and said despite her tears, "I am not childless."

"I am here, Narcissa," Tom said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

I opened my eyes. Tom was watching me.

I drew him into my arms, and said quietly, "I had not known. Thank you."

The sensations had been almost painful. I smelled her talcum still, and a young boy's tears. Their intense joy in each other's company, each touch a belonging and a homecoming. I had thought mothers bonded through birth and suckling. I had been wrong. It was not only a function of womb and teat. Finally, I understood that red-haired woman.

"Are you envious?" He asked.

"Yes. I am also fiercely glad, that if only one of us could have had the boon of familial belonging, it was chosen for you."  
  
My mother had died in the gutter. I had killed my father. No, it was right that love and family had come to him. I was broken enough for the two of us. I had broken enough for the two of us.

 

  
\-----

The trials for the day were underway when Tom led me into the courtroom. I saw heads turning around to watch us. Taking a deep breath, I lowered my cowl and sat beside him, grounding myself on the warm line of heat where he pressed his body into mine. I had slowly begun weaning myself from clawing my wrists, though I did still resort to it when I was at a loss for words, or highly stressed.

Across us, the Wizengamot was in full attendance. Narcissa sat at the head of the court, her face serene and stern, as if she had not cried in my arms the previous night. The viewing galleries were restless as they pointed at me.

They brought Dawlish in. He was thin and emaciated, and looked as if he had not slept a wink. He had been of Harry's Aurors. His gaze was heavy when it came to rest on me.

"You are hereby charged to defend yourself against multiple counts of terrorism, political assassinations, attacking civilians, and undermining national security."

"And what about taking Voldemort's virginity? He begged for it by the end," he said in a low, vicious tone.

Quick-quills were jotting down his words feverishly. The crowds were restless, eager for more scurrilous details. The Wizengamot members peered at me. Narcissa's expression fell for a moment before it turned blank again. Tom's hand, I noticed then, was on his knee, and his knuckles were white. As uncomfortable as it made me to acknowledge any remaining part of my life before an audience (they had had enough of me against my will), I felt it meet right then, to place my palm over his lightly. I wondered why. His grip relaxed and he upturned his palm to clasp mine loosely.

 _Virginity_. I found it ironic that they cared for something as archaic as that, as if it made any of the rest comparatively more forgivable, as if the first time was the most criminal.

"Guilty!" It was Griselda Marchbanks. She looked revolted as she looked between Dawlish and me.

One by one, the rest of the Wizengamot cast their votes. He got the Death Sentence. Narcissa clanged her gavel.

They brought the next man in. Cornelius. He had lost weight in prison, and looked small and meek without the loudness of his pinstripes and bowler. He did not meet my gaze as Dawlish had. He was quavering as the Aurors dropped him into the chair of the accused. I sat back, already drained by the proceedings. It seemed as if there was a conspiracy to drag me back to a past that I had contentedly left behind.

The court was hung on him. He had been one of them, after all. Finally, a closed testimony was passed around. Severus's memories. I dug around in my robes for a headache potion, as they bent their heads in and out of the pensive, as they looked at me with pity and incredulity. Then the press demanded to have access to the testimony.

"I think I ought to commercialize this lurid interest," I told Tom, delighting in his choked laughter. "I would, if I wasn't quite certain that Severus remembers better."

"Don't you dare belittle what you suffered," he said tersely.

"It doesn't matter to me, not anymore," I admitted. "It is, however, appallingly clear that I shan't be free of it soon, as long as the public finds entertainment in the gritty, scandalous details of how the Dark Lord was defeated. I might as well as profit from it."

"You have no need for blood money," he replied, upset.

"No, I suppose not. I am a kept man, after all," I teased him, delighting in the color that swept across his cheeks, in the fierce possessiveness that lit his gaze.

"Do you wish you could rule?" He asked me softly, as they fought over each conviction, as they brought in more and more memories wretched, as they stared at me as if they did not know how to hate me anymore. I kept my magic reined in.

"No," I said truthfully. Then, because he looked sorrowful at what he assumed was my abject giving up, I continued, "I have bigger designs, that are not limited to this country."

"The book!" He said, pleased. "Your mass indoctrination schemes!"

He had begun reading with Bella. He claimed to like it. He memorized sections of it, and would come back to me often, asking questions about my assumptions, and we would debate fiercely. We often resolved our arguments in bed, with one over the other, panting and passionate, and I was glad that we had one more matter in common.

"Indoctrination is easy. I want them to learn to think," I said, unable to suppress a smile at his enthusiasm.

Tom took in the sight of the court, fighting over the scraps of me in vials and pensieves, and he sighed, saying, "You have set yourself an uphill task."

"Ah, darling, but if I won't do it, who will?"

It thrilled me to be cocky with him, to see how he responded with glittering eyes full of promises for later. It was certainly a better use of my energy than expending it on the goings-on within the courtroom.

Severus's trial was the last. The courtroom was packed to the rafters. He looked as he always had, unkempt and grim, unlovely and irate. Then I noticed the dark circles beneath his eyes, the fine tremors in his fingers, and how he refused to look at me when I walked to the witness stand. There were light-bulbs going off from every corner, as they tracked me. I resisted the urge to cast a disillusionment charm, and took the stand, under the bright glare of gaze and light. It was good, I supposed, that I could not make out a single face, except Severus's, since I was the closest to him, given how I was blinded by the brightness, given how poor my vision had become. My magic was askew, suddenly porous, conducting emotions and fears and curiosity, conducting the screams of those who had been condemned here before, conducting the victor's justice that had been enacted here over many centuries, and so many were debasing me in their active minds, fitting the stories to the man who stood before them. I gripped the wooden railing with my hands, fighting myself so that I would not lapse into clawing myself bloody before them. I performed for an audience every night with Bella, dueling as gladiators. That I had not minded. This, however, sent my magic careening, and I felt cornered.

"Hold your mind!" Severus barked, seeing no doubt how I glistened under the beams, how I was a scant emotion away from falling into the chaos. The chains restraining him tightened.

How many times had he demanded that of me? I struggled to separate my magic from the surround. I gripped the elder wand, and it rose to consume the madness, delighting in each lash of alien magic.

"We have only a single testimony for this trial," Narcissa said. "Please proceed."

Her voice was a cool sip of water. I clung to it, and somehow was reminded of Andromeda taunting her about how I craved to suck at her teats, of the conversation I had with Tom before we had come here. My emotion rippled through as magic, despite how I strove to channel it through the wand. Severus's magic, the closest, was wry in its judgement.

"I was captured on the sixteenth of August, in the year 2000." Silence cloaked the room, anticipatory. "Severus Snape had been the first to capture me. I believe he was about to kill me, when the Order arrived. I begged him to kill me, to spare me what was to come, and he refused to. Albus Dumbledore had me duel him, though I was in no physical or mental state to do so. We dueled, and Severus intervened when a curse nearly stopped my heart. It was the first time that he saved me, against my own will."

"I had inhaled nerve gas, and needed medical attention over many weeks when I was brought to Hogwarts. Severus saw to that. I am certain I would have died otherwise. In the days to come, he repaired my body, after each interrogation session I underwent with Albus Dumbledore, after episodes of mob justice at the hands of the Aurors or the Unspeakables, or the Ministers in the government at the time. He provided more than the most basic of medical care necessary to ensure my survival, since he paid attention to my long-term health and to the chronic ailments that beset me." I took a deep breath. "I can truthfully say that Severus intervened whenever he could, sparing me whatever he could. He made the voluntary decision to seek out Draco Malfoy, to offer them his services as a spy, so as to break me out of imprisonment. This was instrumental in my rescue. Without his assistance, this war would not be over right now, and I would not be alive."

A thousand voices broke out. Narcissa silenced them with her gavel, in vain.

"The war may not have begun had you not been captured that day," a wheezy voice stated. Tiberius Ogden, if I recognized the voice correctly. From this vantage point, with my eyesight, they were a mass of blurry faces. "Would you not say that Mr. Snape was instrumental in starting this civil war?"

That was true. I offered, "As long as there was a power vacuum and an unprincipled Minister who stood only for his own personal profit without a thought to the nation's welfare, I believe there would have been a splintering eventually. I agree that Severus's actions precipitated the war. However, Dumbledore and I had been engaged in strife for many years, even before Severus had come into his service or mine."

"Mr. Snape was a spy first for you, and then for Dumbledore, and then he returned to Mr. Malfoy for your sake. Is this correct?" Ogden continued.

"Yes."

"Why would you intercede for him? His actions that brought the war to Scotland led to many lives lost on December 31, 2003. His actions to take you into extrajudicial custody led to a civil war the likes of which this country has not seen before. We are given to understand that you underwent physical and emotional trauma extensively as a result."

"I am giving my testimony," I said in a level voice. "This is not an intercession."

"Would you intercede, should you have the power to?"

There was silence again. Severus's magic had already prepared itself for condemnation, for judgement, and somehow the man had decided that my sentencing mattered more than the Wizengamot's, even if I was powerless to kill or protect.

I took a deep breath and said plainly, "While I believe every single decision he made was irrational and driven on emotions, the entirety of his decision-making brought us here. The war is over, Mr. Ogden. He cauterized the bloodshed, though not by design. And I cannot condemn him for it."

"You would not prioritize avenging yourself over the greater good?" There was a catch in the question, and I wondered what it was. I did not care, truly. I meant to leave after this was done.

"This is a courtroom of law and justice, not a warlord's tribunal."

"If we were to set him free, if we were to set anyone who had a part in perpetrating the atrocities you suffered, would you enact extrajudicial vengeance for their crimes?"

I wanted to kill Cornelius and Dawlish and Hagrid's Giant and so many others that still lived. I would have, had I not wanted to leave, had I not wanted to live out the rest of my numbered days with Tom as best as I could. Time was my most precious resource. Time was life.

Even if I went about avenging myself, I had little patience for torture. Twenty minutes of the Cruciatus followed by the Killing Curse would be it. Let them have Azkaban then.

I decided to be charming. Perhaps it would help book sales down the line. I had more ambitious goals these days. I wanted to change how generations later lived and thought. My life was only the beginning of my legacy.

"I cannot say that the thought of vigilante justice has not crossed my mind, Mr. Ogden." There were cries from the crowd, glad that they had unmasked the monster who still breathed behind the skin of a broken man. "However, I am preoccupied these days in understanding the fabric of our society, in understanding why we went to war, in understanding what it shall take to avert us from such perilous times again."

"While this is not related to the trial, would you mind addressing the speculations that run rampant that you mean to orchestrate a puppet government?" It was Madam Marchbanks. "There have been no less than twenty-five reports from the Unspeakables that Thomas Malfoy is your descendant."

Oh, I had not thought of the last name he bore. I was taken aback for a moment, before I realized that he was a Malfoy by blood. I was glad that he had not borne the name I hated, and I was envious that he was free of the taint of my legacy. He was no half-blood.

"He is not," I said confidently.

I had no blood relations left. Harry had been the last of them. Tom did not have a single drop of my blood in his veins. I was truly the last of them, then. The last of the lines of the Founders. I had read The Tales of Beedle after my visit to Ollivander. Bella had said that there were rumors this referred to the line of the Peverells. And I was the last of them too, since Dumbledore and Harry were both dead.

I stood alone. And I was free.

"There are rumors that you are dying," she continued, mercilessly. "There are rumors that you are magically depleted after Mr. Potter's demise due to the rupture in your connection, after your wand's breaking, after your imprisonment."

I took a deep breath and focused, and white carnations appeared on the lap of every wizard and witch in the chamber. And for Madam Marchbanks, I conjured a bouquet.

"My dear Madam Marchbanks, a lack of magic is the least of my troubles."

I thought back to the porosity I struggled with, of the permeable boundaries between my magic and the surround, and of how it had driven me insane.

"Indeed, perhaps I may have been a more fortunate man had that been the case."

She did not ask another question.

"Hem, hem," a sickly, sweet voice popped up then. I could not make out anything except a cast of pink.

"The room is yours, Madam Umbridge," Marchbanks said.

"Mr. Voldemort, wouldn't you say that the Ministry's and the Order's actions were in line with treatment accorded to any dangerous terrorist who had murdered many in cold blood? Seeing as that you are alive and in good health, with no lasting effects on your magic, perhaps you exaggerate your experiences. I had my differences of opinion with Albus Dumbledore, but they revolved around the fact that he was _soft_  on criminals and lawbreakers."

Cries broke out. The populace agreed with her. The villain got what he deserved. The Wizengamot, thanks to the families they were born or married into, had many traces to my movement over the decades. They called for Umbridge's disbarring from the trial. Then there were a few decent ones, like Marchbanks, who wanted to speak justice, not scandal. I told myself that it was best to drain the venom in a formal setting such as this; easier to fight a voice than many.

"Madam Umbridge, perhaps we ought to be more considerate of our witness's experiences." It was Ogden.

"My good wizard, how do we know that is not a sympathetic ploy towards staging a political coup? We have only his word for this, and Mr. Snape's memories. Given Mr. Snape's treachery and spying, we must question the truth of his memories. We are well aware of their skills in manipulating the mind. How are we to say that they did not force the condemned to believe they had perpetrated these acts? As we saw in the case of Morfin Gaunt, it would be a critical mistake to believe only memories."

I vaguely remembered Morfin. My uncle. It had been an exceptional piece of magic to hoodwink him into believing that he had killed my father. I wondered if Tom knew. I wished he had heard before, that this was not the first time he was hearing of it. I did not seek his understanding, but I desired to provide him an explanation, even if the intensity of the original motivations had faded with time.

"Mr. Potter's leadership was widely respected amongst the Aurors and the Order," Umbridge continued pleasantly. "Mr. Potter went against hierarchy and authority to uphold his integrity, as my own experiences in teaching him proved. He was willing to die for what he believed in, when he was only a schoolchild. He was our savior of prophecy. Why should we take the word of a man who had tried to kill him as a baby? Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter had given everything up to fight this man, to protect us from his evil."

Evil? It seemed silly, but I knew the power of words. The simpler they were, the more binary they were, the more they persuaded. Indeed, the crowd swayed in hope, wanting their heroes back, wanting me to return to the guise of a monster who could not be named.

"I would be willing to swear a vow and testify," I offered, wanting to end this, even though I knew the outcome of the debate would be instrumental to my life and legacy.

I could hardly drag them kicking and screaming to a school of thought if they considered me no more than an insane murderer. I would hardly be a scholar to them, but I saw a path towards becoming one of those intellectual anti-establishmentarians that the commoners flocked to when tired of the inanity of the mundane. I thought of Foucault, of the reach of power in the written word, of how systems were built with patience and deliberation, of the fact that the who mattered less than the why.

It was interesting to see that I had more political and legal experience than the lot of them, and I had been only a _terrorist_.

"We don't offer witnesses vows," someone pointed out. "It is not done."

I could have called out the precedent of 1642, of Litmerick versus Bode, but I doubted that anyone except a ghost at Hogwarts that taught history and I would know.

"Veritaserum," someone else suggested tentatively.

"No," Narcissa said sharply, clanging the gavel. "There are other established processes to cross examine witness and the veracity of their accounts."

"The potion is the easiest and the first recommendation of our legal code."

So they had wanted it all along.

"His health would not bear the toll. I can drink it instead," Severus called out amidst the arguments. He must truly love me then. I watched Narcissa overrule Umbridge, and then an Auror came to give Severus the potion.

They asked a few preliminary questions to verify that the potion had begun acting.

"What was your relationship with Albus Dumbledore?"

"He was my employer. He was also my closest friend."

I had not known that. Severus was remarkable in the magnitude of his deceptions. Love was not proof to his treachery. How could one man be trusted and loyal still, even after a lifetime of lies and disloyalty?

"What was your relationship with Harry Potter?"

"I was his teacher. I had vowed to protect him with my life, to the best of my ability, until he was no longer threatened by the Dark Lord."

That explained his passion in hunting me down. And yet, he had risked his life - no, he had thrown it away, when he had returned to spying to save me.

"How did you circumvent the vow when you returned to spy for the Death Eaters?"

How had he?

"The Dark Lord was no threat to him then."

"Voldemort killed him, Mr. Snape."

"I don't know why the vow did not consume my life then," Severus admitted, his eyes huge and his face glistening. "They had a bond. I speculate that due to some combination of their bond and the fact that the wards were crafted of the Dark Lord's blood, magic registered it as a suicide instead of a murder."

Severus was one of the clever ones. I wondered if it could be true that he had survived due to a glitch as that. Or had he circumvented the vow somehow? He was under the influence of a potion, but I had long-held suspicions that he had developed a high tolerance for the medical-grade, ethically cleared potions that the Ministry used.

"Why did you return to spying for the Death Eaters? Did you know that your actions would lead to civilian and material losses?"

Material losses? I stared at the blob of pink. Since when had this world cared about material losses? Bombarda was the first spell many parents taught their children. It had made it to the top-three spells practiced on a daily basis in the self-identified cultural census, ranking alongside Alohomora and the potato peeling spell.

"I had vowed to keep the Dark Lord alive, as per Dumbledore's wishes, since many of Dumbledore's plans for ending the war hinged upon his prisoner's survival. Mr. Potter was unrelenting in his cruelty, and to keep the vow my best course of action was to deliver the means of rescue to those who fought for the Dark Lord still."

How many vows bound Severus? And how did he still live? He had vowed to Tom that he would die for me, I remembered. And underneath it all ran the vow of loyalty on the Dark Mark that had not killed him yet.

"Did you raise the issue of Voldemort's treatment with Dumbledore? What was his response?"

"Every day," Severus replied. "He told me he had pragmatic reasons to turn a blind eye to the situation. He told me that he had faith I could keep the Dark Lord alive."

Dumbledore had suspected that the horcruxes would shatter each time death touched me. Perhaps, he had hoped too, that the final sliver in Harry would shatter one day, that no harmful ritual would be necessary to separate soul from soul, that he could spare Harry from the half-life the ritual would have condemned him to.

"You are not a healer, Mr. Snape. If Voldemort's ills were cured by a potioneer, was the situation as perilous as you make it sound?"

"I am not a healer by trade, but I was forced to become one by circumstance." Severus shuddered, and there were tears running down his grimy face, born of potion and born of emotion. "Potter had diseased dogs fuck him. Potter wanted to turn him into an animal. Magical Creatures did not affect the Dark Lord's blood, for all that they exposed him to various strains of lycanthropy and various versions of turnskin curses. I believe the Castle's magic protected him. So they turned to common animals, to dogs. Dumbledore did not intervene, saying that my sole obligation was to keep him alive, and that precluded precautions against non-fatal ailments. Truthfully, I do not think that Albus could even begin to comprehend the depths of depravity that we enacted in that tower. He had his hands full fighting a war. I think he underestimated the cruelty of others since he had little in himself. He was pragmatic, he saw no way out of the war other than the Dark Lord's death at the right time, but he did not seek vengeance as much as victory. So it was on my shoulders then. I put the Dark Lord into a coma to slow the spread of the virus, and then ran to Charing Cross, to steal diploid vaccines, to develop an accelerated anti-venin before the virus touched his central nervous system. Over three years, I developed many contacts on the Continent and in London, to ensure a steady supply of preventative vaccinations and post-exposure prophylactics. Whenever it was in my power, I goaded them away from cruelties I had no antidotes for, so that they tore him only along the seams I knew to darn back."

Titillated, the mob stared at me, whispering and pointing, no doubt eagerly awaiting a broadcast of pensive memories of the Dark Lord getting fucked by dogs. That had been Cornelius's idea. Harry, for once, had been reluctant. He was quite taken with the idea of making me an animal, but he preferred me to keep my mind, so that I would live the truth of it. Rabid dogs boded no good for a man whose mind was already mostly rabid. Once Harry had come around to the idea, he had gone to various pounds to find mutts that looked like his late Black godfather. He must have truly hated me, for if I were turned he might have been equally affected, given how knit our lives had been by then. He would rather be a dog if it meant I was canine too, I supposed. Harry had been scorched earth in ways Dumbledore had never been.

And Severus. Severus had been one of my best, one of my most brilliant. If anyone could have learned to seek in the Muggle world for science, it was him. I had taken him into my care when he had been a schoolboy broken. I had taught him, I remembered, and I had encouraged him to break further, until only betrayal had been left.

Love had taken him from me. Love had returned him to me.

"You did not write to the guild for approving your test protocols, before you tested on a human being. Did you accept the eventuality of your disbarment from the profession?"

"Of all the fears that kept me awake at night, this did not rank high," Severus muttered, and nervous laughter sprung from the crowds.  
  
Severus was taken away by the Aurors. I stepped down from the stand and returned to Tom. The Wizengamot was unanimous in their vote for house arrest with monitored magic for a decade, and early probation conditional on conduct. He was permanently disbarred from the guild, and from holding any positions professionally that might involve creating potions.

Tom was with Narcissa, in an alcove, and they looked wretched together. I wondered if they were grieving what Severus had confessed or Andromeda's poor grandchild.

"Voldemort!"

It was Marchbanks. I turned to face her.

"I heard Albus's wand came to you," she continued in her no-nonsense voice. I appreciated her equanimity after the revelations of Severus's confession and her fierce focus on logistics. "As the executor of his estate, I must ask that it be returned to Hogwarts. He wished it buried in his crypt."

That had the makings of a disaster. The wand would not last a day in the crypt without finding a new wizard to bend to its will. It was fortunate for everyone else that it had come to me, that my power overwhelmed its nefarious will.

"I am sure you can consider it a gesture of reparation," I said sweetly.

She looked conflicted. I doubted she had the stomach for the greater good in the way Dumbledore had. She wanted to be _good_.

"I heard you are leaving Britain," she trudged on. "I hope we don't meet again."

"Likewise, Madam Marchbanks," I assured her.

I watched her depart and shook my head. Why did they need to cripple themselves with binary distinctions? The human mind, and the human heart, did not lend to binary experiences.

I let Tom and Narcissa be, and moved towards the antechamber where the Aurors had taken Severus, presumably to wait for an Unspeakable to cast the monitoring spells on him. He looked as grim as a convict on the death row.

"I wanted a death sentence," he informed me bitterly.

He was only looking at the floor, bloody-minded in his decision to not acknowledge me. His magic, more truthful, curled towards me desperately, craving forgiveness for a multitude of crimes, and not all of them had been crimes against me. I was not Dumbledore. I was not in the business of flagellation, forgiveness and atonement. All I found myself willing to give was respect.

"May I have a moment with him?" I asked the Aurors. They looked reluctant, no doubt fearing that I might kill Severus for the revelations in court, restarting my career in vigilante justice.

"Who is in charge here?" I asked patiently.

It was one of the distaff Rosiers. I gave him my wand and nodded. He sighed and shuffled over, getting the others outside to stand guard. Severus was pale and shaking, more fearful of my words than of my magic.

"Thank you for the warning to hold my mind," I offered.  
  
I had been overwhelmed, until Severus had barked at me to hold my mind. I suspected I had an ingrained reaction to that command from him, given how frequently it had been part of our rigmarole of those days.

"I am so sorry," he told me, full of anguish and guilt, clasping his hands as if to beseech me for something he did not know how to ask for.

It was perhaps the first time in our life that he was crying before me. He had begged me before, once, I remembered. I did not think he had cried before me even once. That had been my role in our dynamic. Who had mastered whom?

"I will send you my book," I said, suppressing a flinch. I did not wish to bring up any part of his confession. It was enough. I had had enough. His Occlumency must have slipped, again for the first time in our acquaintance, and I was seeing those years from his eyes, and oh, how wretched had been that creature in the garret, because I was clawing my wrists to focus, reopening the wounds I had made in the courtroom when he had been speaking. The air about us was charged with visceral grief, as he wept for those years. "Severus, the first edition of my book! I might even autograph it for you."

After they led him away, Tom came to me, and my wand was in his hands. His eyes were red and he told me hoarsely, "I am done with him. I am done with this country. Let us go home."

"I promised to show you Salazar's chamber before we left," I reminded him gently.

There were many eyes watching us still. I wished that I could take him into my arms and reassure him that I was fine. I wished that he might draw me closer and cast a look of dismay upon my bleeding wrists. Instead, we settled for quiet and patience, as we waited for the chambers and corridors to be cleared, before we could leave towards the floos in the atrium.

I could wait. I knew to wait. Enough had had they carved out of my life. All that had been left unscathed of me by them was him; this secret joy of my eventide.

\-----

The chamber was in dire need of restoration work. I decided to speak to Lucius. In his puttering about the Manor, he had repaired extensive damage to ancient structures. I had not realized his skill. I did not think he had known himself. However, his patience, sense for aesthetics, and attention to detail proved him an excellent restoration artist.

"There is truly a Basilisk in here?" Tom asked, hushed. He was blindfolded and clung to my arm. When I waved the great stones open, I heard her rattling through the pipes.

"Don't fear," I told him gently, stepping before him in case the Basilisk had gone feral. I could smell her; the scent had changed. We heard her scales sliding across the uneven stones, against the cavernous walls.

"I am not afraid. I am with you," he said staunchly, reminding me of that boy of fourteen under the full moon. He meant every word, and it was balm to my pride after the titillated crowds at the trial.

I was pulled from my reminiscence when I saw the snake. Its skin was molting, and its form was undulating in pain. And I realized the scent was one of prolonged sickness. Poor, wretched thing. How long had it been trapped in here, with little to hunt and eat?

I knew I had to put her out of her misery. How long would it take for her to die on her own otherwise? For all the intelligence in a magical creature, it was still a creature, that wanted to survive. I wondered how to go about this. I had little desire to end the last known Basilisk, one of the final markers of my inheritance.

"Can I touch her?" Tom whispered, unaware of my musings.

"Yes, of course, my darling." I kept my voice even as I coaxed her to me in Parseltongue. She came to me a lamb for the kill, trusting, in pain, and when I clasped Tom's hand in mine and placed it on her dry scales, he exhaled in delight.

"I can feel centuries," he murmured, rubbing circles onto the scales. She lay quiescent in a way she would not have, had she been in good health.

After Tom returned to the Ministry, I came back to the Chamber. The snake awaited me before the great stone doors, still as if petrified.

"I am so sorry," I murmured in Parseltongue, casting diagnostic charms, finding only death and decay.

She was rotting from the insides out. This was beyond my ability. I sat down at the foot of the stones, touched by grief, wondering what to do. She moved her great head, lowering it to my lap, and drew a rattling hiss through her giant mouth. Her fangs rested open over my chest and the weight of them pushed against my ribs, and her venom was seeping into my robes, but I knew she would not harm me. I set my wand aside and ran my fingers delicately over the giant mass of her head.

When I had met her last, I remembered, I had been a cocky teenager, who had wanted to use her to further his agenda. She had bowed to my will because of my lineage, but she had fought me.

Now, we were only two broken creatures in the chamber, both condemned to death, even if not together.

"I will follow you in a few years," I said, and hated the sentiment in my voice.

She moved her girth, and my hand snagged against her horn. Magic, sentient and willing, crept into my blood then. Hastily, I moved my hand away, closing the cut with a quick spell. I was drawn, again, despite myself, to caress the horn with my fingers. I felt the magic of her, ancient and sad, traversing through my fingers into my heart. When I withdrew my fingers, she had ceased respiration.

"At the beginning." I remembered Ollivander's words then. "At home."

I gently cut away the horn from her corpse. I burned her then, in bright magical fire, watching until I could not see a trace of her viridescent scales.

Had she lost the will to live in her long imprisonment? Had she been cognizant even when she had been put to sleep? Had she been drunken on loneliness? Had she been sane?

I cried there for her and for myself, for what we had once been, for what we had once wanted to be. It was a relief to be able to cry in privacy.

When I had been young, privacy had been all that I wanted, isolation its own security. I realized that I did not have any expectation of it anymore, somehow resigned to the entire nation and lands beyond learning of the secrets I had clung to, of the events that I wished to forget, of the memories that I wanted to take to my grave.

The fire had burned out to cinders. And I left the chamber, closing it behind me.

I would not restore the chamber. There were no heirs left. I was the last that spoke Parseltongue. I had not felt loneliness as this before.

Let this too end with me.

  
\--------------

"Tom had to stay late at the Ministry," Narcissa said, coming to take my cloak. "A few last errands, before the two of you set off to Montserrat."

She had waited in our quarters and I saw that she had set out dinner for me.

"I am not hungry, Narcissa," I said, rubbing my eyes wearily and walking to the row of potions that had been set out too.

"Eat at least an apple, my darling," she coaxed me, coming to me and taking my arm in hers, gently, and leading me to sit down on the sofa with her.

I was too taken aback for a moment to respond harshly, by the liberties she took, and I thought of Andromeda's comments, and of how fleetingly cherished I had felt when drinking of Tom's memories of this woman, his mother in all but womb. I sat there by her stiffly, as she cut an apple into even slices for me. When I tried to shift away from her, to put a pace of distance betwixt us, she moved with me, and drew my fingers into hers.

I wanted to ask her to leave, vexed and unnerved by her latest whimsy, too weary to deal with her sternly. I thought of how the basilisk had died in my lap trusting, of how they had doubted my persecution until every shred of it had been laid bare for their perusal, of Severus loving me enough to ensure that I did not die an animal, of Tom who had fought a war for me, of Narcissa who had ended that war to set us free to build a life far, far away.

"And, Father, how can I love you  
Or any of my brothers more?  
I love you like the little bird  
That picks up crumbs around the door."

The Priest sat by and heard the child;  
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,  
He led him by his little coat,  
And all admired the priestly care.

And standing on the altar high,  
'Lo, what a fiend is here! said he:  
'One who sets reason up for judge  
Of our most holy mystery.'

The weeping child could not be heard,  
The weeping parents wept in vain:  
They stripped him to his little shirt,  
And bound him in an iron chain,

And burned him in a holy place  
Where many had been burned before;  
The weeping parents wept in vain.  
Are such things done on Albion's shore?"

Her voice was low and musical, even and sad, as she sang to me. I sat by her, frozen and craving, still and frightened, and when she drew me into her arms, I went to her silent and awkward. She smelled of her talcum and of grief, of a day's toil and of sweet sweat. Her arms were thin and still the safest place I had been in. Her frame was small and I had never felt more protected in my life.

I thought I might have cried, as she did then, weeping for that lost boy who had been bound in chain and burned by Albion's shores, but I was caught in the truths of her grief as they shone golden between us and I was caught by a joy so fierce that tears were beyond me; that I mattered to her, even when shorn of exaltation and power, that she wept for the motherless child than for the man Tom had taken as his own.

"Go to Montserrat," she said quietly, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "Go wherever you please, with Tom. I will hunt them down, whoever is remaining still. I will summon shamans and sorcerers, to bind the souls of those that died to limbo. I will salt their land and drag up their bones for carrion."

I was, despite my intense discomfort at the position I found myself in, touched by her devotion. I wondered if she was as precariously sane as the rest of them. When her lips brushed over the rune carven onto my face, a queer feeling clutched my heart.

I thought of her son. She had been willing to treat with Andromeda even afterwards.

"She spared Tom and me that day when they raided the Manor. We ran into her when we were fleeing the Aurors. I shielded the boy. She would have had to kill me first. War had not yet torn her then to kill her sister. She spared us. A life for a life, she asked, and I vowed, desperate to get Tom away before they saw him. I- I had not known it was to be Draco's life one day for Tom's."

\----

Tom found us in the early hours of the morning, and I woke to hear soft murmurs as they exchanged greetings. I had fallen asleep in her arms, and I woke to find her comfortably braced against the high arms of the sofa, her dress voluminously spilling over to the floors and crumpled between us, her hands clasped about me, as if I were precious. I wondered if she had done this many times over with the children she had raised.

Tom had drawn a chair across us, and had an easy hand drawing circles about my ankle. Half-awake, I listened to them speak of the mundane and the trivial, and I wondered if I had ever spoken without reserve to anyone but Tom.

"Narcissa likes her lie-ins, my love, but we have a port-key home," Tom murmured, waking me gently, bending to press a kiss to the delicate skin at my knuckles.

His fingers lingered over my sleeve, over the gashes I had left yesterday to ground myself, and I was touched by his genuine care to safeguard my privacy even in the presence of a woman who had seen me vulnerable. His love for me was not one that demanded exposition. I was not required to prove myself worthy of him by rendering myself miserable and confessional, repentant and vulnerable, wretched and broken, before one or many.

"I am afraid I trapped him," she said easily, shifting her palms to my shoulders so that I may rise when I chose to. "I ran a persistent campaign last night."

"You are more persistent than Churchill," I muttered, sitting up and then regretful that I was not within that net of safety she conjured.

"Was he the fat muggle minister who went about nude and smoked like a chimney?"

"You are a well-informed woman," I said, suppressing a grin at the quaint picture her words drew. She sat up and squeezed my arm affectionately, mindlessly, and I wondered so. Tom bent to kiss her cheek.

"I shall visit you," she promised.

"We will ward you out," Tom swore, earnest and full of mischief, and he smiled delighted when she laughed.

"Not even a hundred wands of elder cannot keep me out, my darlings," she said sweetly, ruffling his hair, casting one final glance upon us both.

"Goodbye, Narcissa," I offered, deciding to give up on finding rationality, instead basking in the quiet warmth that her touch and voice and lingering smell left me with.

\---------------

"You have been quiet," Tom murmured, slipping into our bed.

The rains had not let up since the evening. I found the pitter-patter soothing. It was warm and humid, just as I liked. There were flowers in the gardens and Agwe had come by to welcome us back.

"I am tired," I explained, pulling up his hand to my breast when he ran an absent stroke over my torso from neck to navel. "I am very glad to be home."

"Can I ask you something?"

I hummed, adrift in the warmth of him. 

"Do you like it when I am-" he took a deep breath. I wondered what had him bashful. "We usually do it my way." 

There were many answers to that. His way had become my way. It was hardly as if I held any sensible references before we had embarked on our physical intimacy. I was, by nature, more passive than active. I liked my agency, but when it came to interpersonal interactions, it had required more extroverted men and women, like Bella or Narcissa or their mother, like Abraxas or Fenrir or Agwe or Tom, to establish an ongoing rapport with me. I enjoyed assertiveness in others, I had come to see, as long as the attribute did not mean me harm. Tom had never meant me harm. That would not change over our lifetimes. He was attentive to my needs, even when I did not acknowledge them, even I was not cognizant of them. 

It had embarrassed me, quite frequently, in the early days, to yield so. The age difference played stark in my mind. It was both an aphrodisiac and a deterrent. I had come around to take it in my stride. Nobody would know. And if anyone speculated about what we were up to, well, there had been worse events in my past that nothing in our bedroom now would hold a candle to. 

So I said boldly, "We usually do it my way." 

There was a sharp exhale, and I felt his keen lust color his magic. Oh, what it was to be young! 

"You really like it?" he breathed, eager and confused. "Really?" Then he sighed, disconsolate. "Is it because of what happened?" 

"I don't think so," I assured him. His doubt was understandable, even if discomforting. I had a policy of studied avoidance when it came to my past. "It is you. It is that you are younger, and I find the contrast heady. It is that you are both gentle and firm, and I trust you." 

"Can we-" he cleared his throat. I was beginning to get a sense for where this conversation was headed. I found his tactics charming, even if I found the subject rather embarrassing. His fingers came to trace my neck, and I fancied he was drawing a collar. "Can we do more? Can I do more to you? Regularly?" Then his voice dropped, and he whispered. "I like that. I dream about what I would do, if only you allow me." 

In for some, in for all, I mused. I was very glad to facing away, nonetheless. "What is it that you propose? What would you do, if I allowed you?"

The scamp must have picked up my flustered state, because he brought his hand, cool as he pleased, to my cock, and groped about absently, no permission sought. "A very good question. What would I do?" He rolled my balls once and said, "What wouldn't I do to you? If you allowed me, what wouldn't I do to you? Oh, you would be the most loved man that ever walked the earth. I will devote my existence to pleasing you."

He pressed a kiss to my back. Then he confided, "I was only another statue in that Manor until I met you, you know. Polished and well-kempt, and stored away. You breathed life into me."

Oh, but he had been my purpose, my reason, and my life, then and now. I had seen his insecurity and his desire to own me, and wondered why he wanted what he already had.

"Do you know how horcruxes are made?" I asked, willing to confess in the darkness as long as he held me. "They are made of magic and death, and of unsurpassed emotion. Every one of them were made of hatred and fear and rage, but for the diary." I exhaled, trying to arrange what remained of my memories into lucidity. "There was a boy of sixteen or so, my darling, who went to find his father, to find what remained of his family. And they spurned him, they wanted nothing to do with him, and this boy, motherless and unloved, seeking a belonging he did not know the name of, killed them and wept for them. The science behind this magic is inexact, if science there be. The soul keeps its secrets from the sorcerers who study it. So the horcrux was wrought in the diary, without spell or intent, wrought of their deaths, of his grief, of his love, for indeed he had loved them even when he had not known them, for indeed he had loved them even when he had killed them, for indeed he had loved them just as he had loved his silly fool of a mother who had died in a gutter." Tom's arms were as binders about me, holding me to him, his breathing sharp, and yet he did not interrupt. He had always let me be. "It was the only horcrux that was not of spell and ritual. It was the only horcrux that I wept for. It was the only horcrux that I clung to when I ran helter-skelter through Muggle London when they bombed us incessantly. It was the only horcrux I took on my travels, and guarded with my very life. It was the only horcrux that remained pressed against my breast, night and day, until I gave it into Abraxas's keeping, that night in 1981. _Keep it safe for me_ , I begged him, _keep it safe for me if you ever loved me_. So the wretched boy brought the diary, brought the best of his soul, to a man who loved him. So there you have it, my love, the tale of the diary."

Tom's kiss was fierce.

"Let me take you," he pleaded, twisting his knee between my legs and thrusting his cock between my thighs.

I lifted my right leg up and forward, so that I was open to him, and he surged in, desperate and needy. I brought my hands behind me, and he clasped them tight in his, away from my torso, opening me further, forcing me to bend my neck and lean against his shoulder. He gave me no ease, he fucked me roughly, and when he spilled into me, he wrenched my legs apart wider and stuffed me with fingers three. I felt his spend inside me, and outside too, over the taut skin of my balls and the underside of my cock, between the cheeks of my arse. I willed myself pliant, instead of jerking away, sensitized as I was, and let him drag his fingers through me as he pleased. When he turned me to meet him, still keeping his fingers hooked into me, I was glad to feel a beloved smile at his lips against my mouth.

"You were no heirloom or statue left behind, my love. You were the boy born of the purest fragment of my soul and of Abraxas's beating heart."

"I love you," he told me, and when in his arms, I saw the many shades of unspoken meaning dancing in the corners of those words.

"I know that you crave to own me, in ways you don't acknowledge even to yourself, because you wonder if you are only a fragment given form, if you are only servant and not my equal, if you are only chance and not fate." He flinched, but he waited, without denying my words, brave as he was. "I tore myself to keep you safe, once in my father's house, and once in your father's house. If there are fragments in this bed, they rest in your arms. I traded fate for destiny. I chose to live for you. There is no crevice in me, in my body or my soul, in my mind or my heart, that I have not already yielded to you. I have nothing left to give you, Tom."

When he took me again, he was above me, my hands held over my head in his grip, my collarbone wet and bruised from his mouth and teeth, my hips rocking into his sloppily, and my ears rang with a rush of blood to my head, and his tears were on my cheeks. So fervent was his passion that I almost came untouched. I was glad that I did not, for then I might have been denied his lovely mouth upon me, suckling and gulping, until I fell to his guiles exhausted and replete.

"I love you," he said again that night, and this time we were equals.

\------

Time passed us by.

Agwe and I had our lively discussions on culture and medicine, on crops and climate change. We played carroms and drank rum under coconut trees, in a shack we had made on sandy shores, and turned the swimsuits of unwitting tourists inside out. On some days, I wrote in a hammock by the shack, suspended between two bendy coconut palms, and he puttered about winning over the locals with the wonders of free medicine. He was a demigod to them. They called him when they needed a midwife. They called when they needed someone to run around a fire with a scythe, chanting nonsense, to put an end to drought or flood. He performed theatrical exorcisms for coconuts. His favorite was healing the men of premature ejaculation and women of hysteria. He would come back, grinning, and I would have to ward our shack against yet another young man or woman mooning after their healer.

Tom took his lord of the manor duties seriously, setting about cultivating bananas and raising chickens. He had many acquaintances on the island, from the surfers to the sadhus, from the barkeeps to the prostitutes. He dabbled in local politics, and was only a month away from getting himself elected on their council. As it was, he went on about plumbing and irrigation at dinner. I shuddered to think of how that council post would mean endless rants on tourism policies, on education, on healthcare, on conservation. I had been roped into doing his accounts, because the poor darling could not do arithmetic for the life of him if it involved decimals or fractions. I was not one for libations, but I had run to Agwe, demanding rum, when my tutorial on logarithms had fallen upon Tom as a pearl to the pig.

Matters had shifted in our intimacy, resolutely. Neither of us had cause for complaint. He was assured in his commands. While there were new means he brought in, surprising me, scandalizing me, I was yet to find something that unnerved or displeased me. There was a state of rightness about this, I decided, and the whys did not matter. And even when he dragged me into salaciousness I found mortifying, I remained a deity he laved worship upon. It was ironic, I wondered often, that they had torn me open so many times, within and without, and I had stayed closed; and Tom had only to cast a glance to have me unfurl, to have me yield body and mind wantonly. Agwe must have rubbed off on me, for I felt the need to think of similes, of land opened by a loving farmer's plow. The maker and the made; I had been right about that, in ways I had not known myself. If this was eventide, it was gentle and beloved. 

I wondered about normalcy. I wondered about men and women who found joy and sorrow in meters that were predictable, in stages of life that were stereotypical. I had known everything else, in immeasurable vastness, before I had known grace. How many times had I died before I could live?

Sometimes, when Tom was away, I would touch the basilisk horn, and think of how the snake had burned just as I had, she underneath stones and I upon Albion's shores.

Narcissa would make impromptu visits. We threatened to ward her out. We had not managed to find the time for it. She did not embarrass me when Tom was around, but sometimes she would visit when she knew he was in London on business, and I came away from her visits mortified and cherished.

Bella continued editing for me. She had developed quite the flair for it. She had a palette of inks to address the many shortcomings of my prose, and she spelled howlers into my words in lieu of leaving editorial notes. I began to contemplate the possibility that she had developed a sexual fetish around editing, just as she had around duelling. Sometimes, she came over, and we duelled on the open sands, in the sunset, and Agwe cheered us on. She had taken quite the fancy to rum and to Rolling Stones.

They would build a bonfire. I tended to keep my distance from fires in the open. Agwe told me I needed to face my fears. What did he know about being spit roasted on fires? A much-traumatized man was entitled to at least some of his illogical fears.

However, they would cajole me, with wit and charm, with duels and rum, and we would while away the nights; Agwe played the sax, while Tom played the horn, while Bella convinced me to dance and duel with her, often slipping from one to the other, drunkenly sneaking in a curse or two while I was waltzing on white sands trying to keep us both upright. Agwe had a sonorous voice, and he would enthrall us with Howling Wolf and Jimmy Cliff. We would fall into a stupor on the sands, drunk and exhausted, all together. On some days, Narcissa would come by, questing after her sister, and steal the remaining rum. For a woman who claimed she drank only herbal tea and pumpkin juice, she had quite the propensity for misappropriating alcohol from our house.

Hermione had written to me once, and had enclosed a moving photograph of a baby. Narcissa said the child looked adorable. I thought every human child looked the same at that age. Nevertheless, I was glad that the girl had chosen to live for the child.

Lucius was quite occupied, restoring the old, derelict mansions that had been appropriated and left to rot by the Ministry when many of the Death Eaters had been taken to prison in 1981. Occasionally, he would come across wards interesting, or curses dangerous, and he would pop over to consult Tom or me. He preferred consulting Tom, because Tom was patient and worked well with others. Lucius wanted clues, not solutions. What a particular man! When they were both stumped, Lucius would come to me, disgruntled. Usually, this happened when there was a modicum of mathematics to their problem. I had no idea how they excelled at Arithmancy and could not grasp basic mathematics.

"It is a pureblood affliction," Tom told me cheerily, twitting me about the fact that I was not one. I loved him dearly, so I let him bandy about his silly wit.

Severus, grumpy and martyred, wished to inflict himself on the world. So he wrote to Tom, lengthy epistles on the mind arts and on potions he was not supposed to be working on. In between the lines, his ever-present concern for me beamed bright. I did not write to him. And he did not write to me. I had had enough of him to last me a lifetime.

On my birthday, sunny and rainless the morning was, and I had begun it well by fucking Tom at our breakfast table, and I had gone to call on Agwe. When I returned from a swim with Agwe, I found Tom peering at the fireplace.

"They are holding a dinner," he told me, looking up from where he knelt before the fireplace, and the fire was full of faces.

"Joy," I called out, mildly drunk on the rum and tea concoction Agwe swore by. He claimed it was a malaria vaccine. I liked swimming when drunk. I had thrown away my life in so many ways that the irony of dying intoxicated in the calm waters of Montserrat was appealing.  
  
"You are coming with me," Tom declared, walking over to me, straightening the lapels of my crumpled robes.

"I have not got underclothes on," I muttered, going with him anyway to the fireplace. I had just haphazardly thrown on my robes after my swim. Tom squeezed my wrist, no doubt planning havoc. At least I did not pile out onto Lucius's fine carpet, limbs askew, and flash the poor house-elves. Tom's hand came to my waist, and copped a feel. He had me nude and open every night, and every day, and whenever he wanted, and his gesture right then made everything new and interesting once again.

"There you are!" Narcissa. She took Tom's cloak, and looked at my bedraggled form.

"I was swimming," I explained.  
  
"You smell of rum and tea," she pointed out, and dragged us into the dining room.

Everyone was there. Fenrir embraced me. He had not done that before. I was relieved when he moved away.

Lucius had discovered a wine cellar in France, in the course of restoring an abbey. So wine flowed, red and rich, and there was laughter and merriment. Even Severus, who had somehow hoodwinked his parole guard and popped over, grim and glum, could not drag down our spirits. He made his way to me and stared.

"No," I told him.

"I made you something," he muttered, and lit up like a Christmas tree when I stood up to follow him.

There was something large and clunky on Lucius's carpet, scuffing it badly, and the house-elves were wringing their tiny hands.

"Don't worry, Lucius likes restoring everything," I told the poor creatures.

"Only if he is paid for it," Lucius informed me, walking to join us, his wand ready in his hand. Oh, it was touching, quite, to see him ready to protect me from Severus.

"What is that now?" Lucius asked, prodding at it with spells first, and then hands.

I cast a glance at the two of them, and thought Severus's best quality was that he understood logarithms. I sat down to the carpet and began undoing the silver and gold wrappings. Since when had Severus developed a sense for aesthetics?

"Oh!"

"Indeed, my lord," Severus said, and his smugness reeked in the air, fighting for space just alongside his delight at my delight. There were many crowded into the parlor. And Tom's hand was heavy on my shoulder.

"Thank you," I said sincerely, running my fingers over the glossy keys of the typewriter. There was magic weighting them down. There was magic in the ribbon, in the lever and the index, in the fonts and the character sets. It was gilded in fine gold and ivory, of acacia backing, and it had a golden encasing. At the corners stood guard two cherubim facing each other.

Mercy's seat. It had been our covenant, when he had begged for mercy on another's behalf, and later I had begged him. Life and protection and testimony. It had been revered, and it had been taken captive, and it had been brought back safe until Solomon had taken it into his keeping, into his care, and there it had been, safe until Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed it.

I looked up at Severus.

"You are crafting tablets," he said, shrugging, shy and pleased at my joy.

Moses had crafted the tablets and led them to a new land. I was touched by Severus's faith in me, that he believed I would craft a new covenant for our people, a philosophy of thought and reason.

"I had never expected to return, Severus," I told him frankly. Then, because it cast a sudden pall of gloom on the gathering, I teased, "Thank you for holding me safe between your wings, my cherubim, until Solomon took me into his palace, protected by the holiest of holies." He scowled. "It is excellent woodwork and magic. I am grateful."

"Is it a compact piano?" Bella asked, admiring the details, ignorant of the purpose.

"It is to write, my dear," Narcissa said, shocking us all. "What?" She asked. "Churchill had pretty secretaries type for him while he dictated in the nude."

Her assured knowledge of Churchill's quirks was concerning.

We drank and feasted, and when the clock struck in the new year, we retired. Narcissa caught up to me while Tom was questioning Severus about the type-writer.

"Happy birthday," she said effusively, throwing her arms about me.

\------

When we reached home, Tom kissed me.

"I want to take you somewhere," he said, eyes bright in anticipation.

He tended to have birthdays gifts that left me reeling and whole. He had saved me on this day. He had saved me again on this day from Potter's brand. I followed him. His hair had grown past the nape of his neck.

"Would you let me cut your hair?" I asked, liking the thought of it. I was no barber, but I could not do worse than his shoddy spell work. His shaving spells were a menace and my body was still red in many places from the burn of stubby hair. Lucius, perfectly groomed Lucius, had taught Tom to shave. However had that wound up with such ineffectualness?

"Let me shave you too," I said. My eagerness must have been evident, because he cast a wry look at me.

"How long have you wanted to do that?"

"A very long time, I suppose," I said easily, linking my arm in his. "I became aware of my filthy urges to shave you and to groom you just now, however. You know how my mind wanders."

"Far be it from me to complain. I quite enjoy where your mind wanders."

He had taken me through floo and apparition, and here we were finally, before Ilvermoney. And before the school stood a snakewood tree, old and strong, resilient to everything that they had done to destroy it.

"I traced back through the genealogy books," Tom said quietly. "Sometimes, when I look at you, I see loneliness." I made to dissent, to tell him that I was not lonely in our symphony of two. "No, I don't mean to say that you are lonely, my love. At the same time, I see your eyes wander towards the tapestries of family trees, towards surnames, towards families embracing and celebrating together." He smiled and kissed me. "I cannot give you a family tied by blood. So I decided to bring you here instead, where Salazar's descendants came many centuries ago. They say that his wand died here, and became this snakewood, and that nothing they did over centuries could tear it down or uproot it."

I could feel in the soil, in the air, in the gentle whispers of the boughs of the tree. There was the scent of the basilisk in the chamber, fifty years ago. There was the scent of my mother's hovel. There was the scent of Narcissa's talcum. And as my magic crept through, soft and seeking, into the surround, it found itself cosseted completely by Tom's soul, pure and bright, warm and home.

"You love me," I said, reminded of the time he had told me the same words, years ago, when he had interpreted secrets I did not know I held.

" _Love_ , my darling, is the least of it," Tom said, placing his head on my shoulder, dragging me to him, and we watched the nesting birds return to the branches of the ancient tree.  
\-----

"Make me a wand," I told Ollivander.

I placed twig and horn on his work desk. He did not seem surprised.

"You knew."

"At the beginning. At home," he reminded me. "Sit down and pour yourself tea. Let us make a wand."

This was different to the first time I had come for a wand. He took my blood and he took my magic. He knit wood and horn together with soft incantations in a dead language. And when they became one, and lay inert, he looked up at me, and said, "Wake your wand."

I stared at him, bewildered. He nodded at the wand. And then I remembered what Tom had told me, about a wand that could sleep and wake.

"Come to life," I whispered, in Parseltongue, and golden light poured from it into my heart, into places where neither yew nor elder had ventured. And that belonging I had sought all my life, unnamed and unknown, was within me finally.

Ollivander went to get me a glass of water again. Ollivander led me to the sole chair in that dusty room again. Ollivander conjured me a kerchief again.

My mother's potion had been for love. My soul's first breaking had been for love. I had fallen under the spell of a mother's love. I had been betrayed for love and saved for love. I had broken everything that I was for love. And in the end, Tom and I had built our covenant in love. Dumbledore had been wrong. I had known love. I had merely not known its name.

Ollivander smiled at me when I conjured him white carnations. Every single petal was perfect, for I had crafted each one delicately and with all my mind. He ran a long, gnarly finger along the edge of a petal.

"Love made you, from the beginning."

\------

"Stop fretting," Tom told me, looking up from his oaken desk, where he had been plotting politics for his banana-planter's council. He was one for intrigue and scheming, and I suspected this was Narcissa's telling influence. I had been more an activist than a schemer myself, and the only place Abraxas had employed strategy had been in the breeding of peacocks. 

"I am fine," I waved his concern away, as I waited impatiently for the summons. The book release was the next day, and Lucius and Bella had planned a fete in his gardens to celebrate as soon as the first sale was made. What if nobody bought it? What if it became a much-mocked artifact, as I myself had become to the public? What if nobody could see past what had happened to me to the book? What if-

"That is quite enough!" Tom remonstrated, pushing his papers and ink pot away. He stared at me, looking quite the dashing patriarchal figure in his deep black robes and austere expression. My gut tightened. 

"Kneel." He rose. "Close your eyes." I heard him walking over to me. "Hands behind your neck." I felt my clothes vanish and I flinched automatically, before relaxing into the brief touch he bestowed to soothe me, a passing glance of his hand over my forehead. His breathing had become heavier. He liked having me kneel, having me wait for his next whim. I liked it too, I had come to realize. It was unexpected, but perhaps it was a rebellion of sorts against what had happened in the tower, about harnessing fears into rather satisfying sex. Agwe was the theorist. Perhaps it was that I had been without a tether for all my life, and I had been either afraid or I had been feared, and having someone to hold the reins of my will for a moment was not unappealing, particularly given that I trusted Tom with all that I was. 

"Tell me to stop if you want, all right?" he whispered, gentle but firm, as I craved him to be. I nodded, not trusting my voice right then. The first lash was unexpected, and I screamed, shocked and frightened, nearly lapsing into an older time. Cornelius had flayed the skin off me with his whipping more than once. In the beginning, it had been because he had hated me. Later, it had been because he could. 

"Hush!" Tom commanded, and I took a deep, shaking breath. When I took stock of myself, I noticed only a warm streak across my back. It did not hurt. I smelled no blood. 

"Ease into it, my love," he said, dragging the end of the whip down the length of my spine. His voice, his care when handling me, began easing me into it. He started flogging me in earnest, at times letting the end curl about my body to tease sharp across my hips, making me shudder and try to shift away in confusion. I was no longer frightened though. And when he became braver still, letting the lash streak bright between my thighs, up into my arse, arousal awakened. I was swaying with the hits, falling deeper and deeper into need, and my cries had changed to raw want. 

"Please," I asked, when I felt his shoe nudge my legs open further. He had never been able to resist my plea, particularly when my voice was ragged and needy. His next lash was the warmest, as it struck clean where my body halved and I was glad for his bracing hand on my shoulder as I came hard. I was still shaking, and was surprised I could stay in that position without falling into an exhausted heap, but his hand came to my neck, and tugged my head down.

"What-"

"You have made such a mess. Lick it up off the floor, my love," he ordered, implacable, and this close to, I could smell his arousal.

They had made me do such acts. This was different, in how he knelt beside me, in how he gently pressed my head to the floor and rubbed my face in the liquid, smearing it about. 

"You wear come very well," he said honestly, and it was praise that made me reel in mortified pleasure, and I heard the sounds of undressing behind me. He was brisk and efficient when he prepared me, and he was trembling when he entered me, needful in a way he had not been in a long while. 

"It is you," he whispered. "You have no idea how you look right now." 

I shrugged, pressing back to him to take him within further. I did not have his fondness for my visage or form. I was glad for his foibles, for they endeared me to him. Only one of us was beautiful, but that did not mean I minded his silliness. Even I had to acknowledge that there must be truth to his attraction, that there must be more than obligation and pity in our intimacy. 

He pressed many kisses to my back and neck, and his hands roved about my skin, petting me and clutching me to him, and his mouth was warm and open against my collar, as he praised me with words wanton and full of love. His fingers came to my cock, determined and playful. 

"You greedy boy," I panted, wishing that I could move my fingers to swat him away, but he had asked me to hold them locked behind my neck. 

"Keep your hands where they are," he said darkly, and continued playing with my sensitive genitals. His other hand came aimless to drag circles in my armpits, and I shuddered at the queer sensation. When he began fucking me in earnest, arousal spiked through once more, uncomfortable even if not unwelcome. 

"Can you come again?" he asked, making no effort to gentle his thrusting. He was close, I could tell. I clenched harder, and he swore as he came. I was glad that he was stronger, that he was younger, because he managed to catch me in his arms. I would fallen flat on my face otherwise. He lay back, flat on the ground, and dragged me with him, along his torso, until I squirmed in discomfort and surprise. 

"Tom-"

"Hands where they should be," he ordered, even if his voice was lax and charming from his orgasm. He spread me open and sat me on his face.

My worries about the book deserted me when he noisily, greedily, eagerly slurped his release right out of me. When he reached the limits of his tongue, he crooked a finger in and opened me still further. "One day," he muttered, tilting his head to the side, to take a deep breath. "One day, I will tie you up open and wide, and just look and taste and play. Perhaps I shall paint you red there. You can beg all you want. Perhaps I will gag you, on and off, so that I need only hear you when I wish to. Would you like that, my love? Would you like to be reduced to just a hole for my pleasure? When I have to be somewhere else, I will you leave you there, waiting for me, just so, open and wide, trussed up. When we go outside, I will leash your cock and tug you around, just so that I can watch you stumble in arousal, eyes begging silently, hands clenched in frustration. If you are good, I will ride your cock when we return home." 

When I came over his chest, I could no longer hold myself up, and my voice was hoarse from screaming his name. Just as well that he dragged me to bed himself, and mopped me down carefully. Then he hesitated. 

"Yes," I said quietly, not knowing what he wanted, but willing nevertheless. I would gladly follow if he meant to leash me and lead me by the cock, nude, into Britain. He would not. That was why I loved him. He ceded to me everywhere else, before everyone else. The only power he sought over me was the power he could put use to bring me pleasure. Each time I came hard, he sat up smug and giddily happy, and would kiss me many times in relief and joy, as if to ascertain that we were both there and safe, as if to taste me and tell himself that I was real and alive still. 

He grinned mischievously and opened my legs. He tied a strip of purple, silk cloth about my waist, and drew it up between the cheeks of my arse, about my genitals, and tucked it at my hip. It was obscene, covering nothing, and exposing everything in a lewd, protuberant manner. It was warm, and even as exhausted as I was, I felt a glimmer of arousal in the places it sat snugly at. 

"There! I will remove it once the party is over. Now go to sleep," he said fondly, kissing me once again. "I will wake you up when it is time for us to depart for the fete." 

\------

Bella threw a drinking party in the dueling arena for the book release, after finishing the formal tea and cupcakes version they had held in the gardens proper. Bless her, I suspected she had strong-armed most of the Ministry into queuing up for the book in the early hours of the morning. Tom, too, looked pleased with himself. I wondered if it was for relaxing me, or if he had had a hand in the strong sales, or if he was chuffed about how he had bound me lewdly. When he came to me, smiling coy, and topped my drink, my hand shook as his gaze skirted down the front of my robes knowingly. He was a devil when he was determined to drag me away from control to wanton surrender. 

In Scotland, outlaws bought my book in bulk and burned it.

There were reviews that dwelt still upon lurid tales of old, of a dark lord fucked by dogs. And in the Prophet's editorial, finally had come a critical review from Hermione, concise and thorough, objective and fair.

> "In every generation, we have philosophers and practitioners who seek beyond the edges of the known, sometimes endangering themselves, and sometimes endangering others. We cannot claim to understand them, and they do not claim to understand themselves. It is necessary, then, to look past the man himself, to the objective wisdom he earns as his pyrrhic victory.
> 
> There are books such as the History of Magic, and Quintessence: A Quest, rightfully called fundamental works of magical education. However, here is a book that does not contain a drop of magic in its making, has neither moving pictures nor dancing text to entice a reader, and yet is more magical than any other, for it examines magic itself, and proposes a framework of reasoning and analysis. It presents an analytical formulation of magic, and provides historical, derivative and anecdotal backing painstakingly collated over a millennium of Muggle and Magical sciences and literature. Not a theme is out of place, and not a word is redundant. The book is not a compendium of references; it is a grand reveal of the author's conclusions, built on the shoulders of giants. Spare and full at the same time, it builds truths within a framework of stated assumptions and approximations, leaving many open questions unanswered for the scholars that will follow. For the lay reader, it provides a blessed touch of hope that we may choose our destiny even if we may not choose our fate, that even in the mundane tales retold there is novelty, that even if we are insignificant to ourselves, we are significant to others. Look at how we evolved from mates to families to tribes to countries, it says, and we will always need each other.
> 
> Voldemort has been renowned as an alchemist who wills magic to transmute form from form. This, too, is alchemy, of thoughts and truths, laid bare on pages, divested of magic and cunning, divested of facades and distortions, leaving only wisdom.
> 
> _Maghdim_  is not a treatise for our times, or for our people, as much as it is a treatise for all times and all people."

"Where is the name from?" Fenrir asked, never ashamed to admit to what he did not know, unlike many wizards and witches.

"Chaldean," I told him. "The word _magic_ has negative connotations in many languages, including English, associated as it is with trickery and fraud, and sleight of hand. _Maghdim_  is wisdom and a love for it, and it is philosophy, and it means magic."

Nebuchadnezzar had been a Chaldean king, the most powerful one. The last occurrence in accounted history that anyone had esteemed sorcery had been during his reign. I had been frustrated at my inability to find an appropriate title. I had considered many, and discarded them as none did justice to the contents or to what I desired of my life's work. I had vented my inability on the matter to Agwe and Tom. If it is about magic, Agwe said baldly, why not call it _Magic_? No, it was not only about magic. Tom suggested _The Philosophy of Magic_. I had not liked that either. And then, it had been Tom, who teased me I might call it _Nebuchadnezzar_. It had then struck me, that the Chaldean term for magic had also meant philosophy and wisdom. _Magdhim_ , I whispered, as we stood by the beach, in the rains, as Tom held an umbrella over him and I, as Agwe cooked us crabs over his magical fire. The title settled into my bones, and the world was righted once again.

I was glad to speak of the book. It was as a baby's birth. When I had carried it in my womb, it had been heavy and uncertain, and I had been superstitious about discussing its progress towards completion. Now that it had entered the world, now that I lay back tired and peaceful, I found in myself a quiet enthusiasm to discuss the book. Fenrir had begun reading on the day it had been released. I was touched. When had he last purchased a book? He seemed to enjoy it.

Occasionally, when I ran around to Ollivander's, under guise, to continue our work together on carbon dating the Elder wand and tracing its origin, I heard men and women on the streets discussing the book, and while often it revolved around the stories of my past, they quoted the book too. They interpreted a great deal out of context and incorrectly, but that they cared to memorize a sentence made me giddy. Madam Marchbanks had written a congratulatory note to me. Even Dumbledore's brother, recluse of a barkeep that he was, had written, complimenting me gruffly on putting some sense into the world.

Narcissa, who had appointed herself to irk me greatly, took no little joy in declaring to the world that she had fought bloody war for this genius. The cruelty in her was more subtle than it had been in her sisters, and I had heard rumors of suicides in Azkaban, of men who had torn themselves apart, raving insane before they had died. Cornelius had been one of those men. I did never find out what happened to Dawlish. I did not ask. Instead, when she pressed kisses to my cheeks, when she urged me to eat more, when she dragged her arm through mine, I eased into her affection, drinking of it as if it were manna to the long starved.

"The tablets of Moses, indeed," Severus said, coming to me.

His copy of the book made me wince. There were coffee mug rings on its folds. He scrawled in the margins, argued all over the pages, and blurred out entire sections that he did not agree with.

I winced and reminded myself that I would not have completed my final drafts without his typewriter.

"Snuck out of probation again?"

"Young aurors. Just out of school. Brewed them an aphrodisiac and gave them my bedroom," he said, waving his hand in a desultory manner, as if he had done it a hundred times before. He must have.

"There is one paragraph that I think about a great deal," he continued, quieter.

> "Every man has his own notion of fairness, of justice, of equality, of rightness. And then it comes to this: how does he right what is not just? What is atonement for a sin? What is reparation for a crime? Is it an eye for an eye, or two eyes for one, or forgiveness, grudging or ungrudging? If criminality is a scale, when does a man lose his right to life? When does a man lose his right to death? Can slavery be atonement? Can slavery be reparation?"

"I am a free man, Severus. Out of the two of us, you are the one that needs a vow to stir out of bed."

"Why do you always mock me?" He asked, though he did not seem resentful.

  
"What else am I to do?" I wondered. "I chose to live for Tom, and that meant leaving the garret you refuse to leave behind yet."

"I saw everything," he said fiercely, gripping my wrist. "I cannot forget."

"Don't forget," I said, wishing that I knew how to explain my determination to stay away. "Don't forget. Why must you forget? We are here because we were there, Severus. Knowing that eases my days."

It was true. I was with Tom, in his arms each night, because I had been in a garret atop Hogwarts once. I would not have won my war. I would have lose most of their loyalty. And Tom would not be alive. The wand of yew had to be broken before my wand of snakewood could come to me. There was death in life and life in death. I had to live my fate before I could live my destiny.

\-----

  
Spring smelled of English violets under a full moon. My typewriter was with Severus because he wanted to apply a coat of golden varnish to the keys that had faded fonts beneath my fingers. _Maghdim_ had sold a record number of copies, outselling even A History of Magic. And since it was a plain book, without a touch of magic to it, it began to reach Muggle blackmarkets too, and Crowley's cult was as fond of it as the punks in Croydon and the Boston Brahmins in America. Bella had gone on a recitation tour around Europe, and crowds hearkened to her engaging read. She knew the book as I did, for hadn't we spent years together on it? I suspected that there might a kernel of sincerity in Lucius's suggestion that she simply record it and sell it alongside the written book. Agwe read it to his devotees on the beaches of Montserrat and when we were drunk together, he would regale me with quirky tales of the reactions of our islanders.

On some days that were few and far in between, I was merely glad that it was outselling the ever popular, animated, sleazy comics that caricatured my days in a tower.

On such days, when I was caught in a snare of gloom, Tom cut through the web and dragged me back into that golden memory of his magic blessing snakewood, of his magic blessing me.

"I did not know what purpose a word such as _extraordinary_  had, in the mundanities of life," Tom confessed on my skin, rocking slowly into me.  
  
We had become easier on ourselves, and it showed in how we fucked too, mellow and full of need, without seeking to own, without seeking to serve, fearful of being left, fearful of being not enough.

Now, when he opened me, he did it with teasing and joy, and I succumbed to him in simple want. Now, when he spewed filth into my ears, and called me his beautiful slut, I laughed and demanded that he fuck me harder. Now, on the occasions when I crawled for him, I made sure to taunt him with the secrets of my body, until he begged me to come to him, until he begged me to ride him, until he begged me to crawl over his face and fuck his sweet mouth.

"Extraordinary?" I mused, as he drew lazy circles on my skin. "Are you referring to your sexual prowess? Or your charming ignorance of mathematics?"

"Ha, I wish!" He said, laughing.

Then he kissed me properly, and explained in the most solemn of tones, "I know why a word such as extraordinary exists, even if most of us have little reason to use it in our life's course. It exists to describe life beyond death, it exists to describe the last basilisk, it exists to describe a wand that sleeps and wakes, it exists to describe magic bound to form, it exists to describe a love where _love_ itself was the least of it."

"I know why the word _extraordinary_ exists, my love. It exists to speak of you."  
  
\------

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for giving Sugar a try, despite its lack of polish and completeness, for traveling with me along my meanderings, and for making it to the end. Have a lovely summer.
> 
> Restorative Fluff and Domesticity: [Epic of the Forgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669747)
> 
> References:  
> 1\. The Ark of the Covenant (Exodus, The Old Testament) .  
> 2\. The Chaldean Kings - Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful of them.  
> 3\. Magdhim - 'Magic', in Chaldean, and wisdom and philosophy  
> 4\. Snape's trial - Modeled on the trial of doctors after WWII  
> 5\. Narcissa's song - Little Boy Lost, William Blake  
> 6\. Rolling Stones for Bella- throwback to the title Brown Sugar (plantations, slavery, the devil, Montserrat, and sweet pussy)  
> 7\. Typewriter - Snape's gone all Remington and managed to throw in a couple of cherubim for kicks  
> 8\. Bestiality et al - drawn from Samir Naji's oped in NYT ('Gitmo is killing me', 2013). This was the original root of the story.  
> 9\. Glyce and Medea (Euripides, Medea)  
> 10\. Albion - the oldest known name of Great Britain. Our poor protagonist, along with Harry, was burned in ward flames on Albion's shores.
> 
>  

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you!
> 
> Originally written as the finale to the (changed timeline) Eldritch arc, in the wake of the Gitmo Bay report; it still retains much of the initial content that may be disturbing or explicit. Apologies! Initially left incomplete in 2013, but I've cobbled together an improv ending of sorts. 
> 
> References:  
> 1\. Abraxas's epitaph - In Memoriam LVI (Tennyson)  
> 2\. Tom's lullaby #1 - Sir Galahad (Tennyson)  
> 3\. Tom's lullaby #2 - Maud (Tennyson)  
> 4\. Brown Sugar - Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers)  
> 5\. Nebuchadnezzar and his beloved city of Babylon (Book of Daniel, Old Testament)  
> 6\. Voldemort's Maud - Maud (Tennyson)  
> 7\. Tom's lullaby #3 - In Memoriam XXV (Tennyson)  
> 8\. Tom's lullaby #4 - In Memoriam XXVII (Tennyson)  
> 9\. White Riot - The Clash (1977), referring to stop-and-search randomly done on youth in Britain during the era.  
> 11\. Scherzo capriccioso, Op.66 - Dvorak (Romantic era orchestral piece)  
> 12\. Nebuchadnezzar's madness - as predicted by Daniel in the Old Testament (Book of Daniel) - leads to him wandering the earth as a madman, and various humiliating circumstances happen to him.  
> 13\. Newburn - the underground lavatory at the cross between Vauxhall and Newburn had seen its share of gritty 1930s thug action.  
> 15\. Torture scenes - loosely inspired by conditions in Guantanamo Bay as described in the 2013 Institute of Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) report and the framework of the Geneva Convention.  
> 16\. "My heart faileth but.." - 73:26, Book of Psalms  
> 17\. Dementia - as per the understanding in earlier centuries (19,20) (Berrios' "Dementia: a conceptual history" published in 1987)  
> 18\. Franck's allegretto in D minor - stunning piece with a lovely English horn.  
> 19\. The structure of the human brain and how synapses translate thought to action - Principles of Neuroscience (Kandel)  
> 20\. Neurons, receptors and transmitters in the brain - Neuroanatomy in the Clinical Context, An Atlas of Structures, Sections, Systems, Syndromes (Haines)  
> 21\. "A more grounded approach" that Dumbledore refers to - Discipline and Punish (Foucault)  
> 22\. Baal's golden calf before Mt. Sinai - Exodus - Moses hates heathen party and breaks the tablets.  
> 23\. Branding poker in the arse hole - the deposed King Edward II of England was said to be murdered this way, as punishment for his queerness (Ref: Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England). A few of the scenes in this story has throwback references to Edward's captivity in Berkeley Castle.  
> 24\. Herakles (Euripides) - Madness is sent to attack him, winds up killing his kids, wife.  
> 25\. Genesis - 90s prog rock band popular with rave crowds.  
> 26\. The Who - the band's Keith Moon, the original raver.  
> 28\. Immortals come to die - Euripides (Trojan Women)  
> 29\. Schonpaeur - The World as Will and Representation, fundamental atheist frameworks that makes distinctions between destiny and fate.  
> 30\. Marijuana for pain mitigation - Marijuana and medicine: assessing the science base (1998, Benson et al)  
> 31\. Came to the world...learned to hate - Euripides (Medea).  
> 32\. The Snark and the Boojum - Caroll (Hunting of the Snark)  
> 33\. Pythagorean Tuning - 3:2 tuning popular with violinists who don't have prescriptive family of tuning methods.  
> 34\. Bipolar junction transistors - If the EB junction of a BJT is reverse biased into an avalanche mode, the transistor is permanently degraded.  
> For all the characterizations of Voldemort I did in my fandom explorations:  
> [Connubium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889503), [ Catullus ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4472828), [Caliban](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14596893), [Dances](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9528887), [Eldritch](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Eldritch), [ Forgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669747), [ Omphale ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16281404), [Ouroboros ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2737937), [Republic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8123602), [Sugar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15056966), [Soul](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964568), [Unvollendete](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15869085), [Almagest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489946)
> 
>  
> 
> **Request: Please don't repost/rearchive/distribute any of my fics that are not on Ao3. Existing translations are fine. Thank you!**


End file.
